


all's fair in love, war, and baseball

by Signel_chan



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Attempted Sabotage, Bad Decisions, Baseball, Deception, Multi, Two Robins, lying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-09-06 03:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16824028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signel_chan/pseuds/Signel_chan
Summary: The baseball team at the University of Ylisse is going to win the league championship this year, no ifs, ands, or buts. They have a strong team built to stomp the competition, and there is nothing that is going to stop them. Nothing except a distraction that only Robin--and definitely not Chrom--sees as a distraction, anyway.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this AU in...June? I think? And while it isn't finished I decided to go ahead and start posting it to give me the mental motivation to finish writing it.

By the second day of full-school class registration, the afternoon session of the Introduction to Ethics class had been signed up for; this was not because of students wanting to take it, but rather because it was a freshman-level class that sounded just easy enough to slide through without needing to put too much effort into it. That was how a lot of the freshman and sophomore students decided their schedules when they didn’t know what they were wanting out of college, picking easy classes and skating by without having to stress too much about what it was they were doing.

This Intro to Ethics class, however, was not signed up for by random students who were all thinking the same thing—and it was certain that there had to be a student or two in it that was taking it because they were genuinely interested in the topic. But there was another motivation for a large chunk of the registered students, as they’d been planning their schedules together from the start and intended on taking the class only because of its supposedly easy nature. They didn’t inform the instructor of their plan, although based on their names the instructor might have figured it out upon first glance at the roster, and so when they rolled into class on the first day of the semester as a whole group of rowdy boys, taking seats and being disruptive from the start, everyone knew that this class was going to go nowhere fast.

“Would you look at that, they managed to do it after all,” one of the girls sitting in the back row of the room whispered to her friend, who was staring doe-eyed at the last boy who’d entered, admiring his blue hair and wide grin. She noticed where the attention was falling and snapped in her friend’s face a couple of times, getting no reaction, before grabbing a chunk of her red hair and tugging down on it, getting her to yelp. “Come on Cordelia, you can’t start getting lost on him again, you _know_ how that turns out.”

“I know, but I can’t help it. You’ve fallen for him before, you’re talking to me out of experience, but he still…wows me. Every time I see him.” Retaliating by flicking her friend’s cheek, Cordelia giggled when her friend shrank back in her chair and mumbled something about how she knew she’d dated the guy in question before but it had ended rather badly for her. “It’s not your fault he thought he’d found someone better after you. I wouldn’t consider a high school girl ‘better’ than you, Sumia, but that’s just me.”

Sumia was still mumbling things to herself, which inspired Cordelia to hug her tightly before turning properly in her seat, watching the scene in the rest of the classroom unfolding. Down the row of chairs from them sat another woman, in the middle of reading from the textbook required for the class, unaware that this large group of boys had come in even with their noisy disruption. In front of her was the only other person who’d opened the textbook so far, although he was sitting on the table rather than the chair, and his book was in his lap. “This class might be a bit more difficult than we were anticipating, boys,” he said, clearing his throat before speaking to try and get everyone’s attention. “Not failure difficult, but a real challenge in terms of material.”

“Would you listen to that, Robin’s trying to tell us that we’ve signed up for a hard class!” The call came from the other side of the classroom, someone else who was sitting on the table but with his feet in his chair. “Didn’t we have everyone agree that this was going to be easy enough for even the dumb ones of us to pass?”

“I said it’s not failure difficult, pull the sugar out of your ears and listen to me for a change, Gaius, I don’t speak to be ignored.” Robin flipped the page of his book, ignoring the middle-fingered gesture that Gaius shot him in return for what he’d said. “I foresee a lot of time spent in the dugout helping with studying for this class in my future, and I don’t know how I feel about that.”

The guy Cordelia and Sumia had been talking about walked around the front tables to get over to Robin’s side, slamming his hands down onto the open pages of the book in his lap. “Hey now, any time you help with studying helps the team as a whole, we need people to not get put on academic probation this year as we make our run to the top, isn’t that right, guys?” The rest of the group they’d come in with let out a loud cheer of agreement, and Robin gave a half-hearted one after them. “What’s with the lack of spirit? Don’t you want to see us make it as league champions this year?”

“Trust me, I have no doubt that we can win the championship if we keep our acts together, but what’s the point of us all taking the same class?” Brushing his hands off of the book so he could close it, Robin set the textbook aside before locking eyes with the guy he was speaking to. “You aren’t going to tell me it’s so those of us who are smarter can help the less-smart guys pass a class, are you?”

He shrugged, turning his head to break the eye contact. “Can’t say that’s not part of why we did it, but really, Robin? You’re going to take up issue with this now? What about last year, when we took that writing class together? I wouldn’t have failed it without your help, but some of these guys would have, and we wouldn’t have gotten so close to being champions without some of them.”

“If the instructor’s not here fifteen minutes after class starts, that means we can leave, right?” The question was asked by one of the guys sitting in the front row, flanked on either side by some nodding eagerly in response. “’cause it’s like ten minutes after class starts and they still ain’t here, and I think there’s lots ‘a better places for us t’be hangin’ than this classroom.”

“Oh joy, we have an uneducated fool in the course this semester, what a treat.” The woman at the end of the back row had looked up over the edge of her glasses at the sound of the question, and had continued glaring over them as the guy had finished his thought. “I hope that you learn in due time that the fifteen minute rule is nothing more than a myth. Besides, the instructor has been here the whole time.”

While people recognized that someone had been speaking, no one had bothered to pay attention to where she was, minus the only other two students in the room who weren’t part of the large group. “We’re already going to be out at practice once class is over, is it really necessary to think about going out to the field right now?” Sitting a couple seats over from where Robin was, the speaker was constantly looking around at the members of the group he was with, keeping mental tabs on all of them. “You can overwork yourself on training, and it would be a shame if one of our best players was—”

“You’re going to call _him_ one of our best? His statistics are atrocious, you should be giving that title to someone who’s actually good at the game.” That was the blue-haired man speaking again, chuckling to himself as he walked past Robin over to the other guy. “Like, yourself, for instance? People actually respect you out on the field, Frederick.”

“Don’t flatter me, my presence on the field is often overshadowed by the players that do things regularly.” Frederick shook his head, looking back at the person he’d been speaking about before, as well as the people on either side of him. “Like the three of them, for example. Do you know how much respect our team would lose if anything happened to any of them, physically, mentally, or grade-wise? It would be a disaster for our reputation.”

“I hear you on that, but…Robin!” The other man pointed a finger in Robin’s direction, hoping he was paying attention (which he was). “Got any specific stats in that brain of yours right now? I need them to prove a point.”

Chuckling, Robin hopped off the table and joined the two where they were, pushing the hand out of his way as he approached. “I could say that I do, but I don’t know what you’d need them for. One’s the best hitter on the team by a long-shot and the other two combined make a perfect player, but those are last year’s statistics and given that we have a transfer student on the team this year, those might get skewed a bit.”

“Transfer student, right, forgot about him.” Eyes shifting around the room to do a headcount, the blue-haired man took a moment counting everyone up before returning to the conversation with a sullen tone compared to how he’d been speaking. “Did anyone inform him that he needed to take this course to be with us? Or is this one of the classes he took out there in Ferox before transferring?”

“If you’re asking about Lon’qu, he won’t be here today due to a mix-up with some of his transfer paperwork, I think, but he should be here next time.” Tilting his head back to look at the three without having to move where he was sitting, the guy who had spoken was one of the people sitting next to the one who’d pointed out the “fifteen minute” rule. “At least, that’s what he told me when we were talking about it earlier. We went to get some food before class and he wanted someone to know why he wasn’t going to be here.”

At the mention of food, everyone who’d come in together fell silent, all looking towards the one who’d brought it up. “Never would’ve guessed it’d be Stahl mentioning food in front of everyone,” Cordelia sarcastically said to Sumia, who’d started doodling something on her hand in boredom. “Now watch, they’re all going to snap at him for doing that, it’s what happens every time with these guys.”

Before anything could happen in response, even though several people had started cracking knuckles and making muttered threats because they felt they’d been left out, the door to the classroom opened and in came a woman who looked just old enough to be an instructor, but too young to be tenured in the position. “I hope that none of you think this grouping is appropriate for a classroom setting,” she told everyone as she walked to the front of the room, setting her papers on the podium at the front and waiting for everyone to file back to their seats. “I get that this is apparently the class for meatheads and jocks, but we’re going to at least try to get things done around here.”

“Meatheads? Jocks? What gave you that idea?” the blue-haired man asked, jumping over the table to take a seat in between Frederick and Robin. “You’ve got to have been to one of our games, last year maybe? Recognize any of us?”

The instructor wasn’t paying any attention to what he was saying, having fished out a marker and began writing a bunch of notes on the board, starting with her own name. “This class is Introduction to Ethics, or, as you’ll quickly find out, your worst nightmare when it comes to how to live your lives. When I’m through with all of you, you’ll be asking yourself if it’s even worth it to try and live ethically, and that’s just how it is. Any questions?”

For the first time since everyone had walked in, not a single person had anything to say in response to her. “Good, I like how you’ve all shaped up already. Now get your books out, we’ve got some introductory passages to read before we’re all introducing ourselves to each other, because I am one of those instructors who make you work for your grade.”

Robin could see out of the corner of his eye the two guys next to him exchanging glances, and when they both looked his way he faced them and shrugged. “I told you, Chrom, I’m not sure I’m down for helping everyone with their homework th—”

“Grimsley, Robin. Kind of a mysterious bookwork, doesn’t do much outside of study and sports, but reliable to a fault. Don’t talk in my classroom when I’m giving directions.” The instructor threw her marker right at Robin’s head as she was berating him, and he was lucky to have ducked at the right moment to dodge it. “Good, you are able to miss getting pelted by line drives even in the classroom. Now do me a favor and pitch it back, okay?”

Stunned at what had just happened, from the marker being thrown to his name and personality being called out by an instructor he’d never met before, Robin meekly did what he’d been asked to do, tossing the marker back at nowhere near the same velocity as it had been thrown at him. “I love this class already,” Sumia and Cordelia said in tune with each other, looking to the other for validation and finding that they’d given it without realizing it. They high-fived when they were facing each other, only for the same marker to come flying towards them, the instructor calling them both out with their names and interests for everyone in the class to hear, only to ask for her marker back.

This continued every time someone said something or acted out in a way that interrupted her introductory teaching, until nearly everyone in the classroom had been spotlighted, some more than once. “Hm, I think I’ve gotten to most of you without trying,” she remarked as the class went into its final minutes for the day. “Anyone left out?” No one was willing to raise their hand and let her know that she’d missed them, but she didn’t mind their dishonesty; instead, she wound up her arm and threw the marker at the only person she saw that she knew she hadn’t already done so to, hitting the book the woman in the far back corner was still reading from. It didn’t faze her even slightly, and it wasn’t until the instructor yelled out her name and her request for the marker back that she noticed she was being addressed.

By that point it was in the last minute of class and there was nothing more that could be done in their short amount of time, and everyone was making quick work of packing up their things and heading out to wherever they needed to go next. Some of the group was heading out to the practice field, others were going to the bookstore to get the text for that class, and then there was Chrom, who had been pelted with the marker a couple times whenever he’d started talking to Robin or Frederick, walking up to the instructor with a confused look firmly on his face. “Can I ask you something, miss…Anna?”

“Had to look at the board to see where I’d written my name, didn’t you? Tsk, I tried to make sure you were paying attention but you clearly weren’t. What can I do for you?” She wasn’t doing anything to get out of there fast, although the room had emptied out in record time, leaving just the two of them in there. “You’re not going to ask me about dropping the class, right? We barely got started on anything thanks to you talkative goons.”

“No, I wasn’t going to even think about dropping the class. I was just wondering how you knew all that stuff about all of us, especially if you’ve never been to one of our games before. Did someone warn you about us?” He was fidgeting as he spoke, not wanting to be there alone with this instructor who seemed to know too much about everyone in the class.

Sensing his discomfort, Anna turned to look at what she’d written on the board, highlighting the important takeaways everyone should get from the course they were enrolled in. “I could tell you my methods, but they aren’t exactly _ethical_ , if you understand what I’m saying. Just keep in mind that I’m everywhere at once, and I’ve got my eyes on each and every one of you. Eyes…and my paycheck. Don’t screw with that.”

Chrom felt like his question hadn’t been answered, but there were so many ways that he thought her response could be taken that he didn’t press further. “Okay, thank you for that. I’ll see you next class then.”

“You got it, don’t expect me to throw that marker so lightly next time!” Right as he turned to leave he could see her wink at him, causing him to shudder as he exited the room, trying to decide where to go next. The logical place was the training field, where he knew he’d see familiar faces, but his heart was telling him to go to the bookstore to meet up with whichever of his teammates had gone there. He made it as far as crossing the campus to get to the store, but he stopped dead in his tracks when the line of students waiting to buy books was out the front door.

That made his decision all the clearer for him, and he headed back across campus to get to where the different athletic fields were located, hoping he wasn’t late and that his friends were still out training. Finding them didn’t happen, as he was passing by the last building of classrooms before getting to the fields and forced himself to stop when he saw someone that looked just like Anna, except wearing something completely different and dragging behind her a rolling file case of some sort. “What’s she doing over here now?” he asked himself, watching her enter the building—before noticing that someone was holding the door open and when they exited, they _also_ looked the same as his instructor and that woman he’d just seen. Rubbing his eyes, he made sure that he wasn’t hallucinating before deciding that maybe it’d be best if he went home for the day, shooting his teammates a message that he wasn’t feeling well before leaving.

There was always the next day for training, or the next one, and given their team’s performance the previous year Chrom was fairly confident that skipping one early-season practice to clear his head wouldn’t affect the team too badly.

* * *

The next session of the class was more of the same that they’d experienced in the first session, with markers being thrown whenever Anna deemed someone being disruptive, telling everyone in the room some information about the person she was attempting to hit as she made her toss. There was one person present that she couldn’t do that to, something she discovered at the end of the class when she did her “have I left anyone out?” schtick and found herself greeted with a firm raised hand from someone who hadn’t been there on the first day.

Her complete inability to even properly name the guy as she stared him down, trying to get a read on who he was and where he came from, made her swear off her little game for the rest of the semester. “Maybe it would’ve been better for you to have been here on the first day, Lon’qu,” Robin said after they’d left the classroom, all walking towards the practice field together. “You could have stopped her from hitting us with markers today if you had been.”

“Papers needed to be properly filed, it was that or don’t come to classes here at all. Now are we going to get to practice today or should we just turn around now?” Lon’qu spoke gruffly, a hint of an accent to his voice that no one else in the group had; as he made clear when Anna tried to get an introduction out of him, he’d only transferred to the University of Ylisse’s campus in Ylisstol to be on a region-winning sports team, rather than the one that they always seemed to beat up in Regna Ferox.

“We’re going to practice, it’s two weeks until the first game this season and we’re not going to lose to anyone this year, especially not any team from Plegia.” Getting a cheer from some of the others at what he’d said, Chrom was too busy paying attention to whatever Lon’qu’s reaction was going to be that he temporarily stopped watching where he was walking. As he was surrounded by his teammates there was no harm in losing track of his position but when someone loudly called out his name to get him to focus on walking again, he couldn’t help but awkwardly laugh. “Thanks for that, I don’t know what we’d do if I hurt myself somehow just going to practice.”

“By all means, I think we’d lose every game this season, because without you on the field I don’t think we can function as a cohesive unit.” Robin’s praise usually came with a second comment, but when he didn’t add anything to what he’d said he also got a cheer from anyone who’d heard him, all of them agreeing on the point that Chrom’s position on the team was too valuable to lose. “So let’s try our best to not get hurt, shall we?”

Those words and the reaction to them weighed on Chrom’s mind for the rest of the walk, to the point that he started to slow down with every step, eventually lagging behind everyone else as he thought about what he’d heard. Yes, he was the team captain and was overall loved and respected by his team, but to be cheered for like that because everyone believed they wouldn’t perform on the field without him? It was giving him a sense of accomplishment he hadn’t really felt before, and that was with taking the team to the league championship game as a bunch of freshmen. Robin had noticed that he’d slowed down and had told everyone to go start warming up without them, just to make sure everything was okay, but when Chrom saw him approaching he motioned for him to leave him be. “I’ll just take a moment to join everyone, go and make sure none of them are slacking off.”

“No way, Frederick can handle that without either of us there. I want to make sure you’re okay, if that’s fine by you.” Grabbing one of Chrom’s wrists and pulling his hand close to him, Robin smiled at his friend. “You’re acting kind of weird right now, is something bothering you? Thinking too much about what we’re going to accomplish this year as a team? What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing, just the pressure of getting all of this headed in the right direction. We’ve got a killer team this year, I think, especially since it’s most of the same guys from last year. Sucks we failed those older guys in their last season but we’ll make up for it.” Not minding that his hand was being taken hostage, Chrom tilted his head back and looked up at the cloudless sky, taking in deep breaths as he did. “You and I, we make a great pair when we’re on the field together, it’s hard to imagine getting where we did last season without you there with me.”

Robin’s smile grew slightly, him moving where he was holding Chrom’s hand to closer to his heart. “It was like we’d known each other all our lives, even though we’d first met at tryouts for the team. Crazy how some people just mesh together when they get the chance.”

Finding the words to respond to that was difficult, especially as Chrom closed his eyes and started thinking back to what they’d done together over the past year, taking the teams in the region by storm and winning that championship by miles, only to make it to the league championship game and lose it in a complete sweep. He could remember all the encouraging words Robin had given him at every turn, the support of him and the team behind him as he stepped into the team captain role halfway through the season because the older players recognized that he had the best control over everyone and could usually make the best calls for the team. He could remember the looks on everyone’s faces as they won game after game, their only losses coming in overtime after close matches that they knew they could have won if they’d tried just a bit harder, and it was all inspiring him to press forward and keep leading these guys to the championship win they so badly wanted.

He was snapped out of his memories not by anything Robin did, but by a feminine voice calling out at someone. “Hello? Are you even paying attention to me? I asked you if you could help me out and you’re still ignoring me!” His head quickly snapped back to straight on his shoulders, while Robin stiffened up as he let go of Chrom’s hand, noticing where the woman was calling at them from. Her steps could be heard against the pavement, before Chrom knew she was standing right behind him. “Wait a second, I know who you are…”

“How in Naga’s name have you found me here?” Robin asked, disgust evident in his voice. “Chrom, whatever you do, don’t acknowledge this girl, she’s only here to cause a scene and make everything much more difficult for you and me both.”

“I’m here to make things difficult? Last I checked, I’m older than you so it’s always been you making things more difficult for—oh, hello there.” As she’d been berating Robin, Chrom had turned around to look at her, causing her to stop mid-sentence and greet him instead. “You look awfully familiar to me, just like Grimsley here. Have you done anything notable with your time?”

Unsure of how he was supposed to take what she was saying, Chrom instead made a mental note of everything about this woman that he could remember, from her silvery high ponytail to her reddish-purple eyes to the way she was standing there with an armful of books, top one being the text required for Introduction to Ethics. “Ignore her, please, she’s nothing more than a pest that we don’t need in our lives. Leave us alone, we’re heading to practice.”

“Practice? Little Grimsley does practice-worthy things?” She laughed, tilting her head to the side to cause her bangs to fall onto her face, obscuring her eyes that Chrom had been losing himself in. “Now stop staring at me, I may recognize you from something but I don’t know you like I know him, either introduce yourself properly or let me and him talk.”

“It’s rude to demand an introduction without first giving one yourself.”

“Sheesh, you’re going to enforce a ‘ladies first’ rule on me? Whatever, I guess. Name’s Robyn—that’s with a y, not an i—Grimmel, and you’re one of little Grimsley’s friends so I’m going to guess you’re almost as lame as he is.” As she went through with his one request, Chrom found that her voice was softening, that she wasn’t sounding as demanding as she had been initially, but then her last bit of what she had to say erased every bit of progress she’d been making. “Come on, now this is the part where you return the favor and say who you are so I know for next time.”

He looked over to Robin, who was shaking his head at what she’d said. “I’m not going to warn you again, you can’t give in to what she says because she will not leave you alone if you do. Let her not know your name and leave it at that.”

“I don’t get why you want me to do that, she’s a bit brash but what’s new about that? We’ve got ruder people on the team and we treat them with kindness.” Giving her his attention again, Chrom went through the standard introduction fare, telling her his name and what he had done that she might have recognized him from, that being the younger brother of one of the more socially influential ladies in Ylisstol.

Robyn’s eyes gave him a once-over before she snorted, nearly dropping her books in the process. “That’d definitely be where I know you from, but I don’t really _know_ you, just that you exist and that your sister’s some kind of peacekeeping socialite.”

“Then shall we get to know each other?” The words tumbled out of Chrom’s mouth before he realized that what he’d said directly contradicted exactly what Robin had been warning him about. “Er, I mean, we could maybe do that over studying or something? I see that book you’ve got there, I was just in that class earlier today. That’s where we came from before this, right, Robin? Ethics class?”

“You aren’t supposed to tell her that,” he grumbled, noticing that Robyn was looking at him with a smirk on her face, “but yes, that is where we just came from. What are the odds that she’s managed to get in there with us as well, we caused registration for it to fill up right away back when it first opened.”

“Aw, you act like getting into a filled class is hard or something, you really should get better at living your life.” Robyn’s rebuttal was given as she shifted her attention back towards Chrom, who was awkwardly smiling at Robin because he’d dug them both a giant hole much too big to get out of on their own. “I’m a late addition to the course, I spoke with the instructor about it and she said there’s enough open seats that she could use someone else who actually wants to be there being there.”

Her victory over Robin came with Chrom trying to make things a bit better for them. “Did you hear that, she’s in our class with us. Maybe we’ll get to know her while we’re in there together, rather than—”

“Chrom, this isn’t the time for you to be trying to flirt with someone.” His words cut his friend off, and for that he mentally apologized, but Robin wanted nothing more than to get away from their current situation as fast as he could. “I’m really sorry, Robyn, but we don’t have the time to be standing around talking to you right now, we are supposed to be at practice and our team performs rather poorly without their captain around.”

She let them get a couple steps away without saying anything, but the moment she reopened her mouth to speak her entire demeanor had changed. “You’re treating me like I’m bothering you, Grimsley, is that how you really feel about me? I’d think, after all those times we’ve crossed paths growing up, you’d at least respect me a little as a person. That makes me, you know, want to cry or something.”

“We’ve upset her.” Stopping just outside the boundaries of the practice field, just close enough to hear his teammates in the middle of warming up, Chrom looked back at the woman they’d left behind, then to Robin, who shook his head at him. “Come on, you’re focused on what we need to do, sure, but what’s the worst being kind to her right now can do? She’s sad because of how you’re treating her, we need to do better.”

“No, what we need to do is ignore her, giving her any more attention than she needs just leads to horrible things happening. I’ve seen what she does when she gets close to someone, she’s a monster once you get past her exterior.” Robin tugged at Chrom’s arm to try and get him to continue where they needed to be, but Chrom defiantly stepped back in the other direction, approaching Robyn once more much to his chagrin. “You’re making a mistake, Chrom, choosing her over the team right now is the worst decision you could make!”

“Don’t look so sad,” Chrom said to Robyn, trying to talk over his friend’s words. “We can’t stand around and talk right now, but after next class, we can set aside a few minutes to talk and get to know each other, Robin or no Robin. Is that all right?”

Her bottom jaw trembling, Robyn gave a strong nod. “I think that’ll be acceptable, I can hold myself to that agreement if you really mean it. I don’t enjoy being given the runaround by guys who think they’re too good for me, like ol’ Grimsley over there.”

“Whatever history you two have, I promise you I’m not going to let it affect how I approach you. Until next time, okay?” He gave her a smile and she returned the favor, and after letting it linger a few moments he felt it was acceptable to turn back around and rejoin Robin, who was staring at him in slack-jawed disbelief. “What’s that look for, I’m making a good impression on her. She can’t be deserving of how you’re trying to treat her, she’s just a cute college girl.”

“I cannot wait until she does something to prove that impression wrong, but by the time she does you might be too deep in her web to do anything about it. Let’s just…forget about her and get to practice, okay?” It was clear that Robin was not thrilled with what had just happened, but he wasn’t explaining anything further to Chrom so he must not have been as bothered by anything as he was trying to pretend he was. At least, that was how Chrom saw it, and with nothing to change his mind he let himself think about that pretty woman that had forcibly introduced herself to him there on the way to practice, anticipating the next time they got to talk almost as much as he was anticipating their first game of the regional season (but not quite as much, the game meant more than anything else).

True to their agreement, they met up to speak to each other once more after class was over two days later, but that came after a class in which Robyn was sitting in Chrom’s seat, unaware it had been the one he’d picked for the past three classes. No one wanted to sit next to her, not when she was a stranger to almost everyone, and so she disrupted the entire balance of the team’s arrangement because there was nowhere else for them to move to while maintaining their distance and positions. She didn’t seem to realize she’d done anything like that when she left class, Chrom already standing outside with Robin at his side. “I don’t recall saying that he was part of our meeting,” she said, pointing at Robin, who looked back at her with a scowl. “He’s just going to cause nothing but trouble.”

“Sorry, I just tend to need someone around to help me with specific stats once we get talking, and Robin’s my right-hand guy, I’d be nowhere without him.” As if to illustrate the point, Robin wrapped an arm around Chrom and held him closely for a couple moments, before letting go of him and acting like he hadn’t touched him at all. “Besides, we’re going to have to go to practice after this and if I lose track of time talking to you, I need someone to remind me that I need to go.”

Nodding as she accepted what she was hearing, Robyn finally got around to asking something she’d clearly been meaning to ask since two days prior: “What’s this ‘practice’ for, anyway? You two doing an outdoor concert series or something?”

“Baseball, we’re on the college baseball team,” Chrom replied, watching her flat reaction to the news. “What, were you expecting something more exciting than that? We’re the best team in the region, second-best in the league, it’s a real important program we’ve got going on here and it means a lot to the university and to us.”

Robyn’s eyes shifted towards the ground as she thought about what to say. “You’re right, I was expecting something more exciting than that, outdoor concerts would’ve been much cooler. I can see you as being the frontman to a band or something, you’ve definitely got the looks for it.” Sensing that she was going to fluster Chrom if she continued down that track, she went in for some deeper questions. “So…why’s the baseball program important? It’s just a college sport, surely this place has other teams that could be considered ‘important’.”

“It does, don’t get me wrong, but other sports tend to get overshadowed by the one everyone’s actually good at. Something about us all being naturals at swinging bats, for the most part anyway.” Chrom glanced to Robin to see if he had anything to add, but he was ignored as his eyes were focused on watching how Robyn was standing. “Plus, all the other teams here want players that are older, more mature, not freshmen coming in and taking control of the program like our group did last year.”

“That would explain why you think it’s important, because it caters to you, I get it.” Biting her lip as she considered asking something else, Robyn threw out any reservations when Chrom looked back at her, slightly offended at how she’d reacted. “So, want to tell me more about why you like the sport? I mean, you’re basically raring to get to practice, aren’t you?”

That brightened Chrom’s attitude right up, allowing him to talk about something he was so passionate about. “It’s just fun and the team’s mostly people I’ve been playing with since I was younger, minus Robin and one of the other guys. Robin came in last year, he’s an indispensable member of the team with his stats and his planning, and then Lon’qu, that quiet and kinda rude guy who was sitting right in front of you today in class, he’s a transfer from Ferox that just joined this year. He’s…made practices a bit more difficult than they need to be, which we’re still trying to work around.”

“Is it really appropriate to be telling this relative stranger about our team’s current issues?” Robin asked, still having his eyes focused squarely on what Robyn was doing. “I get that I know her, but you shouldn’t be informing her of all our team secrets because you don’t know her, and you’re still convinced she’s not a bad person.”

“Can it, Grimsley, you’re just mad that Chrom here’s paying attention to me and not to you,” she muttered, glaring straight at Robin before looking to Chrom with wide eyes and a much more positive demeanor. “You can tell me all about your team’s struggles right now, I won’t tell a single soul about what you tell me.”

“That’s really the extent of the issue, that he’s just difficult to play with because he’s from a Feroxi team that’s a lot less bonded than our team is, but we’re working the kinks out on it. By the first game he’ll be just as eager and excited as the rest of us, I’m sure of it.” Chrom chuckled, sizing Robyn up with his eyes much like he had the first time they’d met, still finding himself getting transfixed by her hair and her eyes. “If you were into playing baseball, I’d offer you a tryout to see if you could make the team, we could always use other strong, independent women with us on the field.”

“Don’t college sports teams tend to usually be single-gendered?” Raising her eyebrows to the point that they were obscured by her bangs, Robyn looked to Chrom for an answer, but he seemed to be at a loss for words, sputtering and starting multiple sentences as he tried to get a solid response going.

Rather than to let Chrom continue stumbling over answering the question, Robin cleared his throat and stepped in to supply a good, solid response. “I wouldn’t say ‘usually’, but what happens is that only guys try out for baseball around here and then it ends up being only guys on the teams. In the overall league there’s several teams with ladies on them, but in the region we’ve got the only one.”

“Cute, I wasn’t asking you though.”

Stunned by how she reacted to Robin helping him out, Chrom decided he was going to at least rely on her having listened to what he’d said. “He’s right, even if you didn’t want to hear him say it. We’ve got an old friend of mine on the team who happens to be the strongest, loudest, most aggressive woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and while she’s not our star player by any means she pulls more weight for the team than a lot of the guys do.”

“If she heard you saying that about you, she’d kick your ass ten ways to next week,” Robin joked, nudging Chrom’s arm with his fist. “You’ve got to be careful with how you talk about her, she’d much rather be seen as one of the guys than called out for being the only female college baseball player in the region.”

“True, if she was standing around here right now she’d be chewing me out for talking about her like this. Her gender’s not a spectacle for us to point out, she’s just a player on the team.” Chrom’s eyes flickered away from Robyn’s face for a moment as he thought about getting beat up for what he’d said, but he came back to looking at her with renewed vigor. “I know, rather than keep talking about this, maybe you could come to practice sometime and see how the whole team meshes together? It’d be a bit boring for someone uninterested in baseball to watch, but—”

“She can meet everyone on the team in class, we’re all there anyway.”

“—you’re right, but there’s something about seeing the team dynamic in action that’s more interesting than just meeting everyone and knowing their names because they said them.” Stretching, Chrom reached over towards Robyn, but she didn’t seem to pay any attention to wherever it was his hand was headed, and he quickly retracted it. “But seriously, come join us at practice sometime, we could always use a friendly face in the stands.”

Under his breath, Robin added, “Even if yours isn’t particularly friendly or wanted, but what Chrom wants, Chrom gets.”

“I’ll consider it, I do prefer to focus on my studies than on sports but I’ll see what I can do about this invitation.” Robyn smiled at Chrom, although with one hand she was giving Robin a rude gesture he glared at her for. “If the semester doesn’t seem to be too rough I might give it a shot. You will give me more information about this, right?”

“Chrom, Robin, what are you two doing here still? We should all have been at the practice field five minutes ago.” That was Frederick, walking up to the trio with several filled water bottles in his arms, stopping his approach when he didn’t fully recognize the person they were talking to. “Oh, are we introducing ourselves to our new classmate? I would have just walked by if I’d known that were the case.”

“We’ve already met her before this,” Robin replied, thankful to have someone new to focus on because it meant he could turn his back on the others, even if not watching them meant not knowing how to stop whatever Chrom might try to do. “And now I’m going to give you the same warning I gave Chrom, just ignore her and don’t waste your time on her, she’s not a great person and you don’t need to deal with her.”

Frederick was not one to typically argue when someone was so adamant about someone not being a good person, but when he saw how enamored with her Chrom was he had his reservations about the truth to Robin’s words. “I’ll be the judge of that myself, if you don’t mind,” he said, adjusting how the bottles were in his arms so that he could hold out a hand for a handshake once he’d come closer. “I’m Frederick, wrangler of wayward men and pitches, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“The name’s Robyn, it’s a pleasure to meet someone so polite around here.” She took up his offer of a handshake, her grip surprisingly strong once she got a hold on him, but when they parted she shrank back slightly. “You’re not going to make my friends leave now that you’re here, are you?”

“Unfortunately, they should be at practice already, the only reason I’m not there is because someone on the team decided to pour out everyone’s water to create a muddy hazard in the outfield, and as hydrating is important I took it upon myself to refill the bottles.” As Frederick was talking, Robin was mouthing the word “friends” to himself, shocked that she’d chosen that of all words to use to refer to them, while Chrom was listening intently about what nonsense had happened since he’d decided to be late to practice. “Come along, you two, we’ve got places to get to before something worse happens. Robyn, my apologize for cutting this conversation short.”

“No worries, commitments are a bitch but you’ve got to keep them.” Her smile was genuine and she didn’t seem to be too bothered as the three men left her alone, two of them wishing her farewell and the third saying nothing at all as they walked away. But the moment she knew they wouldn’t look back, a scowl formed on her face, disgusted at something that had just happened; with how much she’d just had to put up with, it wasn’t completely clear what she wasn’t thrilled to have gone through, and she wasn’t going to make it obvious.

Back with the boys, they were walking in silence, Robin several steps ahead of the others because of how badly he wanted to get away from Robyn and get to doing things he enjoyed. Frederick kept looking at Chrom, trying to come up with something to say about what had happened, while Chrom was off in his own world thinking about how he’d done a friendly thing offering for her to come watch them at practice sometime. “So, when were you going to mention that you were looking at a new girlfriend?” Frederick finally asked, causing Chrom to laugh out in surprise. “No, no, none of the fake shocked behavior, I’ve seen you get like this before and that’s where it leads.”

“She’s just an old friend of Robin’s, I’m getting to know her because she knows him,” he answered, once again causing Robin to be shocked that the word “friend” was being used. “I don’t really see anything going anywhere with her, not unless she shows up to practice sometime and gets into the game.”

“That’s not a requirement you put on any of your other girlfriends before you dated them, why are you putting it onto this girl?” They were just outside the field’s gate, the rest of the team visible out on the field throwing pitches and goofing off, but Frederick wasn’t going to let Chrom enter until his question was given an adequate response, and Robin wanted to be present to hear the justification for the decision. While he was happy that someone else was trying to keep Chrom from moving too fast with Robyn, he wasn’t okay with him talking to her at all and Frederick seemed to be allowing that behavior.

Chrom’s way of answering this question was to look down at his feet, fidgeting by tapping his toes on the ground. “I don’t know, maybe because of how all those other relationships ended? Have to make sure that they’ll come to practice with me, for me. But that’s…not why I invited her, I invited her because she seemed to be curious about what we do and there’s no better way to learn the game than to watch.”

“You’re hopeless, but I’ll accept that. Just don’t disappoint us or the team if you don’t ever see her in the stands.” Robin opened the gate for himself as Frederick was talking, but the two others followed him in rather quickly—only for a pitch to come barreling their direction, tossed at them by a man who by no means should have been on the pitcher’s mound.

It wasn’t a hard toss, but the way it rattled the fence directly by Chrom’s face as he entered made everyone involved in the shenanigans stop what they were doing to make sure no one was hurt. “I see that we have someone who can barely hit the ball attempting to throw it,” he remarked, picking the ball up off the ground and tossing it back towards the mound for someone else to deal with. “Let’s focus on our own positions for a change, rather than trying to learn ones that we don’t need to switch up, shall we?”

“We also don’t need to switch up our lives by flirting with danger, but you aren’t listening to anyone on that front so why should they listen to you on this one?” Robin muttered just quietly enough for no one to hear what he’d said, even if they could tell he was talking. No one else needed to know what it was Chrom was doing that had now delayed practice from starting twice, unless it became more of a regular thing than it already was, and Robin was going to do his best to keep his lips sealed about it. Frederick was good about keeping people’s personal matters quiet as well, so the only person that needed to stay silent was Chrom himself.

Unless hell froze over and Robyn did show up at practice someday, but there wasn’t any real chance of that happening, not when she wouldn’t be able to cause any issues if she did show up. Her way of acting was to cause damage and then act smart, like she was too good for doing anything wrong, and being sequestered up in the stands with no way to impact the players wasn’t her style. Or, at any rate, it wasn’t usually her style. With her, there were no guarantees on anything, but Robin was hopeful she’d stay out of this one little piece of heaven these guys had.


	2. Chapter 2

The first baseball game of the regional season was the coming weekend, as noted by all the fliers posted around campus. It was almost impossible to turn around without seeing something that talked about the home game to start the Ylisstol Shepherds’ season as they attempted to get qualified for the league games in the spring semester. The players themselves didn’t seem to talk about the upcoming game too much, although it was clearly on all their minds as they sat in class, itching to get back to practice to make sure that they were in the best form possible for the game.

Robyn had moved her seat after that first time in class, sitting in the back row in between where Cordelia and Sumia still sat (and still gossiped with one another) and where the other woman spent her time reading and ignoring the rest of the class. She’d tried striking up conversation with her a couple times, finding that her name was Miriel, that she was a triple major trying to graduate as soon as possible and was only taking Intro to Ethics because it was the only class available to her that worked for all three of her majors, and that she had no time for idle chitchat when there was reading to be done. Talking to the gossipy hens on the other side of the row was just as useless, as they both talked exclusively about things that Robyn cared very little about, unless someone was staring at Chrom, then they talked about him and she couldn’t help but listen to that.

But what they were saying about him wasn’t _good_ enough for her, and she didn’t have the time to approach him and start talking to him herself, yet there was such a call within her heart to talk to Chrom once more that she knew she’d have to make some sacrifice. “Chrom’s this big-shot on campus just because he’s on the baseball team and his sister’s so popular in Ylisstol, but once you get to know him he changes. And then you love him, and then he breaks your heart for some high school girl,” Sumia explained, furiously folding some paper in the shape of a flower as she spoke in a whispered voice to not be heard by anyone not named Cordelia or Robyn. “And that’s why I won’t let Cordelia fall for his charms, and I won’t let you either.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need you watching out for me,” Robyn replied, putting on a big smile as she heard Sumia gasp at the denial of her services. “I’m a big girl, I know how to handle myself when it comes to toxic guys, if he’s not a good person I’ll figure it out eventually. How’d you get to know him well enough to date him, anyway?”

“W-we were friends in grade school, that’s how.” Flustered, and still folding her flower with the same intensity as before, Sumia glanced up at where Chrom was sitting with his friends for a split second before going back to looking at Robyn. “We decided to date right after we graduated, and it lasted for, like, a few months into starting college, then he left me for a high school girl that he hadn’t dated when we were still in school because he didn’t like her like that when he saw her every day around the school. But karma got him when she turned out to be a horrible girlfriend, which was totally obvious because she’s a horrible person anyway, and he left her for some Feroxi girl he met at one of his baseball games, but then he left _her_ because he couldn’t keep up with the long-distance thing, and that’s where we are now. He’s been single like a year and—”

“And _I_ would like to get to have my chance with him,” Cordelia proudly interjected, before covering her mouth as she realized she’d been too loud in speaking and got most of the class to look back at her, trying to make sense of what she’d said.

“—this is why we can’t allow her to openly fall for him, she gets kind of stupid about things when we’re talking about him.” Finishing speaking only when the class seemed to have resumed normally, Sumia smiled and set her now-complete flower on top of her opened textbook. “He’s like a magnet for most ladies, but he only picks the ones he thinks he has a chance with, like Maribelle and whatever the Feroxi girl’s name was, and if he thinks that you’ll know right away. He’ll invite you to dances, to games, to anything he’s intending on going to, and if you turn him down he’ll never speak to you again about it.”

“How about inviting you to practice?” The idea to throw that out had come to Robyn while she’d been listening to Sumia’s comment, but she hadn’t expected the wide-eyed, in-awe reaction she got for saying it. “Let me guess, that’s not something he usually does, is it?”

“I’ve known him since about the time we started walking and he’s never invited me to practice, not even once,” Cordelia replied, sounding downcast. “But that might be because he doesn’t want me there critiquing him for his form while not in a game.”

Sumia was grabbing another piece of paper to start folding a second flower, while still invested in the conversation they were having. “He also knows that you’ll go to his games without invitation, so he doesn’t have to extend the offer.” Her reminder of that fact to Cordelia cheered her up a bit, but left Robyn looking confused as she didn’t understand the intricacies of the relationship she was learning about. “Chrom and Cordelia used to play ball together when they were younger, like way younger, but she decided to go a different route growing up while he stuck with it.”

“And that gets us to where we are now, with him being mister popular and everyone either wanting him or being an ex of his?” Robyn asked, getting two nods in response. “Okay, starting to get what’s going on here. Thanks for the insight, ladies, but I think I know how I’m going to handle this situation now.”

She scooted her chair back over to where she’d been sitting for class, leaving the pair to their own devices again, although Sumia was slightly unsure of what had just happened. “I wasn’t aware there was a situation we were helping her figure out. I thought we were just telling her about Chrom.”

“She _did_ mention being invited to practice, maybe she didn’t just say that to make me jealous, maybe it really did happen?” Cordelia suggested, glancing at Robyn and the determined look on her face, before shrugging it off. “There’s no way, Chrom really wouldn’t invite someone that’s new around here to practice before he invited one of the people that’s the reason he enjoys playing ball, would he?”

Smirking as she heard the verbal struggle that the girls were experiencing, Robyn mentally told herself that she was going to make the best of what was coming up, that being the baseball team’s practice after class. She had no real desire to go for the sake of understanding the game, but rather she was going to attend exclusively for watching the players themselves (specifically Chrom). If she wasn’t noticed up in the stands while they practiced she’d be happiest, and if anyone on the team, minus the one she was really there for, tried to talk to her she’d just have to ignore them and go on with her day. The last thing she was interested in was having someone else on the team try to explain everything to her, especially since none of them had tried reaching out to her as she’d been sitting in the same class as them twice a week.

She meandered over to the practice field a bit after class, but long enough after that she knew the team would be busy already, and quietly went up into the stands right behind home plate, hoping that no one would catch onto her right away. To her surprise, a blonde woman with long ringlets cascading down her back was sitting in about the spot she’d been considering calling her own, hunched over with something on her lap that she was more focused on than practice. Rather than leave this strange woman alone, Robyn decided that she’d at least have a little fun with her, stomping loudly across the bleachers to get the woman to pop her head up and start looking for the source of the noise.

“Gods, do you have to cause such a racket? I’m trying to get these statistic sheets ready for the game this weekend so we can have fun placing bets on who’s going to do worst,” the woman snapped, finding Robyn and glaring at her with extremely narrowed eyes. “Who are you anyway? You’ve never been to one of these practices before.”

“I have no interest in introducing myself to you,” Robyn replied, taking a seat two rows behind the blonde, who rolled her eyes and went back to what she was doing. “You said stat sheets, though? What’s the deal with that? Grimsley was acting like he’s the stats guy, he didn’t tell me he had someone providing him with the stats.”

The woman must have tossed one of her ringlets over her shoulder, because it caused the rest of her hair to bounce. “He does do the official stats himself, I’m making sheets for those of us watching the game this weekend so we can tally things ourselves in the stands to tease the players that can’t keep up with the team average. Not like you’d understand why that’s so much fun to do, you’re clearly new around here if you don’t know who I am.”

“And I don’t care who you are, if we’re being honest.” Acting big and important was the quickest way to get to the bottom of Robyn’s favorite people list, and whoever this woman was, she had earned a one-way trip down to the lowest spot. “I’m just here to watch some friends and be supportive of what they’re doing, not make sheets to make fun of them when they end up sucking.”

“Oh, but you don’t understand, it’s more fun to watch them if you’re watching for the sake of making fun of them later.” The woman leaned back down to continue what she was doing and Robyn stared blankly at her for a bit, before standing up and jumping over the last few bleachers separating them, choosing to sit right next to her instead. “Excuse me, but why are you so close? You want nothing to do with me yet insist on sitting basically on my lap!”

“I changed my mind, big deal.” Robyn smiled at the woman, trying to make her feel more comfortable with her presence right there, but the woman didn’t seem to have any interest in getting comfortable. Not only that, but she didn’t seem to be much of a woman at all—and the fact that this _girl_ looked rather young was a big warning to Robyn to not get too involved. “You don’t go to this college, do you? I’m new here but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around before.”’

Pursing her lips together as she thought of how to respond, the girl ended up saying nothing, merely standing up and walking away without any explanation whatsoever. While it wasn’t what she’d been going for in getting so close to her, making her leave meant that there wasn’t anyone present to cause more issues for Robyn as she watched the practice, and that was fine by her. Still though, the thought of that girl and what she had been doing there in the stands lingered on her mind throughout the practice, even when she was trying her best to see what Chrom in specific was doing, not caring about anyone else out on the field.

The team wasn’t very big, but they certainly were an interesting bunch to watch working together to create plays for practice. Whoever it was out on the pitcher’s mound, he was fairly decent at throwing balls just easy enough to hit that the person practicing their batting wasn’t spending more time missing than making progress, and the outfielders were doing a great job at retrieving the balls as they made their way towards the back fence. None of that mattered to Robyn, though, as she was focused on the pair standing by first base, Chrom telling Robin something and Robin writing it out on a large whiteboard that they’d brought with them for practice strategies.

She was just about to yell something towards them to see if she could break their concentration when a ball went awry off the batter’s bat and hit the fence directly in front of her, causing her to jump in surprise. “Why, you aren’t who I typically expect to see behind home plate for practice,” Frederick’s voice said, as he came up to the fence to get the ball, but Robyn didn’t recognize him in his catcher’s mask until he lifted it off of his face. “Usually it’s Lissa or one of her friends back here, but you’re a face that I think I prefer to their young ones. No awkward questions about why high schoolers are here if there isn’t one.”

“I…can’t say I know who this Lissa gal is, sorry,” Robyn bluntly replied, although in her mind she was trying to connect that name to the girl she’d harassed out of the place earlier, despite the name itself seeming familiar to her for some reason she couldn’t recognize. “Why do you mention her by name?”

“She’s Chrom’s younger sister, I’m surprised you don’t know of her yet you know about Emmeryn.” Ball in hand, Frederick pulled his mask back down and turned to return to practice, but not without parting words: “I can’t quite tell if you’re being genuine in your ignorance or not, but if you aren’t then please do us a favor and try to be more honest, we don’t need someone lying to us about inconsequential things.”

Being treated like she was possibly lying about not knowing who someone was made Robyn want to snap back at Frederick about his attitude, but as she let what he’d said sink in she realized that she did vaguely know of Chrom having a younger sister, because she’d been mentioned a time or twenty by Emmeryn in her time in the media. She hadn’t ever seen the girl though, and now that she knew there was a chance she’d been rude to Chrom’s younger sister she regretted doing what she’d done, knowing that there was now the possibility that she’d be talked bad about by someone who wasn’t Robin to Chrom, which would throw a huge wrench in what she wanted to do with him.

Of course, that was a lot of ifs that she was having to work with there, and she could always just hope for the best. That’s what she decided on doing as she went back to watching practice, seeing the team come together to try and work out whatever kinks they had remaining in their teamwork before their first game. Several more balls came flying in her direction, Frederick always being the one to come retrieve them and make idle chitchat with her whenever he was there, but by the time he’d come to get the fourth ball that had hit the fence she was wishing someone else would be the one to come her way.

While she was focusing on that, she hadn’t noticed a familiar head of blue hair peeking its way up at her, a surprised look upon Chrom’s face to see Robyn actually there in the stands. “How are you enjoying practice so far? It’s rather boring, I’m sure, but are you making any sense of the game from it?” he asked, her gasping to hear his voice but attempting to play it cool and act as if she hadn’t been caught off-guard by him being there. “Ha, it seems you got rather wrapped up in watching the team, which is good news for us! Will we have another fan in the stands this weekend?”

“Haven’t decided yet,” she told him, even though in her heart she knew she’d be there come hell or high water. “And this is way more boring than you’d think, I don’t know any of you aside from you, Frederick, and Grimsley, and I’m not getting any kind of explanation as to who any of you are. Guess not missing the first week of classes would’ve done be a lot here, huh? Bet Anna made sure all of you were properly introduced.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll find a way for you to meet the whole team soon enough, just so you know who it is you’re supposed to be cheering for.” Flashing her a smile, Chrom found himself nearly getting hit by a ball that came flying at him, not from getting hit in that direction but from the pitcher tossing it that way. It was enough to visibly shake him, and Robyn would have been lying if she tried to act like she hadn’t screamed at the sound of the ball hitting the fence right next to Chrom, who got vocal after he’d collected himself. “Wh-what was that for? Gaius! You moron, you’re not supposed to throw the ball at someone!”

“Wasn’t my idea,” Gaius called back to Chrom, holding both his arms in the air. “If you’re going to blame anyone, I’d blame your second-in-command for telling me to get your attention somehow.”

“Chrom, if you think that I would be insensitive enough to tell him to throw a pitch at you, you’d be mistaken,” Robin stated in his own defense, voice sounding serious enough to be believed. “Now, if it were at the woman you’re speaking with, that might be a different story, but at you? I would never!”

“What’s this ‘bout throwin’ things at people?” There was a group of three coming into the conversation from over by third base, all of them trying to figure out what was going on but their attention solely on Robin rather than anyone else. “You’ve gotta tell us when we’re gonna start playin’ dodgeball out here, ya can’t just spring that on us!”

Sighing, Robin now turned to the three newcomers, trying to ignore how Gaius was busting up laughing out on the mound. “Vaike, I know that understanding a situation is rather difficult for you, but you need to get that we weren’t playing dodgeball and that someone—” he pointed towards Gaius, right as the redhead doubled over from his laughter, “—decided that he was going to attempt to take Chrom out while he was distracted.”

“See, I told you we shouldn’t have gotten involved, you idiot.” Almost as if it were rehearsed, both people that he was with hit him on each arm, even thought it had been the smaller one (height-wise, as Robyn looked at them she could tell that both the people doing the hitting were roughly the same size muscle-wise) that had spoken. “This is why we don’t get involved in the stupid stuff, there’s always someone who doesn’t get what’s happening.”  
“C’mon now, y’know that ya wanted t’see what stopped all them from practicin’ for the moment, why’re ya both hittin’ me just ‘cause I got what was happenin’ a bit wrong?” In response to that, both of them hit Vaike again, and he let out a loud groan at them both, which led to a third set of smacks. “Seriously guys, please stop hittin’ me, I didn’t do anythin’ wrong t’either ‘a ya!”

“Good gods why does he sound like he’s never been taught proper language in his life,” Robyn remarked, hoping to get Chrom to laugh at her reaction but getting silence in return. “That was funny, you’ve got to give me credit for that, but seriously will you tell me what that dude’s story is before I have to ask for it myself?”

Chrom shook his head, watching as chaos descended on the practice field with everyone either finding something to laugh about or something to argue over. “Speak to him on your own time, I need to set this mess straight before someone gets hurt or quits the team over this. We have our first game this weekend, we don’t have time for this nonsense!” Clearing his throat and stepping away from the fence, he began to attempt to take control of the situation, knowing that someone not involved was listening to his every word. “Let’s get back to what we should be doing, shall we everyone? Vaike, Stahl, Sully, the three of you stop having a slap-fight and go back to passing drills, I need to know that you’ll all be in control of whatever comes your way in the game. Gaius, stop laughing and get back to pitching properly, I’m sure Lon’qu likes it better when you’re tossing him balls he can hit. Everyone else, just keep doing what you were doing, Robin and I will join you all soon enough, once we’ve got the plan of attack for the game squared away.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t gone to talk to that woman behind home plate, everything wouldn’t have fallen into disarray,” the man with the bat in hand, who Robyn assumed was the Lon’qu he’d referred to, said to Chrom as he walked back over towards first base. “Is she a distraction for you that we need to rid ourselves of? Women are highly distracting temptations for athletes at times.”

“The way you talk about ladies makes one wonder if you don’t realize there’s a woman on the team,” Frederick mused, getting Lon’qu flustered at the statement. “If you can play with us all regardless of our genders, we can have a female guest in the stands. Although, you are right that she is a bit of a distraction that we need to get rid of, if only for Chrom’s sake right now. You two can always talk later.”

“Let her stay, I’m going back over to Robin now so she isn’t going to be distracting me for much longer.”

“No, it’s fine, I should get going anyway.” Since everyone was aware of her presence and she didn’t care for it, Robyn wasn’t going to hang around any longer than she needed to. Watching Chrom’s face fall as his assurance that she could stay was ignored made her heart pang slightly, but she wasn’t going to let him dictate her actions all the time. “I’ve got homework to take care of, some papers to start writing, things that I need to get done that I can’t do here.”

He looked at her, letting his gaze linger for a moment before nodding in understanding. “And we should get back to practicing as well, so it works out in the end. You have yourself a great night and I’ll see you soon, right?” She laughed as she shrugged, not wanting to make when she’d encounter him next something obvious, and watching him accept that she wasn’t going to be up-front about her intentions was one last moment they could share before they parted ways for the day.

But as she was leaving the stands, she turned back around to look out at the field, seeing the team having gone back to their practicing, and her eyes fell onto where Chrom was still standing at the fence, watching her leave. It wasn’t something she thought she should do, but she waved at him in farewell, him giving her a halfhearted wave in return, and that gesture was enough to put a bit of spring in her step on her way out. Feeling anything like this for Chrom hadn’t been in the plans, so why was she getting so happy to see him and to get any kind of attention from him? What had gone wrong?

* * *

Hearing about the game secondhand the Monday after it had happened wasn’t what Robyn had intended for, but she also hadn’t exactly intended on going to the game either—what she’d been aiming to do was show up and sit outside the stadium while the game was going, listening to the announcers call the plays while she did homework. But when she’d gotten there, there’d been nowhere within listening distance that she could sit, aside from actually in the stands, and the idea of sitting in the stands by herself with textbooks in her lap was not one she wanted to entertain. As she hadn’t told anyone she was considering going to the game, she was sure this wasn’t going to be a problem, but when she realized that the next time she talked to Chrom and his friends they were going to inevitably bring it up and she’d be hopeless in holding the conversation, she needed to do something about it and fast.

That was how she ended up getting involved in a conversation about the game before one of her other classes, time she spent on campus without any sign of anyone on the baseball team. No one in the class was particularly invested in the team or the sport, but it was the first game of the regional season and everyone at the school really seemed to want to watch their team make it to the league season (which Robyn wasn’t sure why the difference was important but she was sure that she’d learn why eventually, especially if she kept hanging around Chrom like she wanted to). By the time class started that day, she knew the final score, who hit for each point, and who the “player of the game” was for each team, even though she didn’t care about the visiting team’s one. All of this was going to be useful for her the following day, she was pretty sure, and if she was going to impress Chrom she needed to try her best to know as much as she could about what mattered to him.

Her plan of making use of that information took a blow when Anna cancelled class in the morning, telling everyone through email to just take the time to do some of the assigned readings. Now if she was going to talk to him about it, she’d have to do it in his territory, not in the neutral space the classroom provided, and she wasn’t sure if that was something she wanted to do. Deciding if she was going to or not took up most of the morning, pacing around her dorm room and trying not to spend too much time looking at the flyer about the game she’d stolen before it could get thrown away. If she looked at that, she’d immediately decide to go just because of how they’d used Chrom mid-swing as the background image for the flyer and she was starting to get hopeless about him.

It had been mere weeks and she was already feeling like he was controlling her life, and she was not a fan of that at all. “I need to be there, I can’t wait until the next time we’re in class to try talking to him, he’ll have moved on to thinking about the next game by then,” she told herself, averting her eyes away from the flyer for as long as she could but ultimately failing and staring at it. His form was amazing, something to be in awe of, and she only wished she could see him in that exact pose in the flesh, without people around chiding him for focusing on her while he did it.

That wasn’t exactly the best motivation to get her to go to the practice, but it was enough to make her do it anyway. Like the last time she’d gone, that blonde girl was sitting in the spot she wanted for herself, right near the fence, but she had papers strewn all over the bleachers around her, checking for something on each and every one of them. While it would have been fun to disrupt her, Robyn wanted to try something new when interacting with her, especially given that she could very well have been Chrom’s sister. “So, how’d your stats and making fun of people thing work out?” she asked, the blonde gasping in shock at the voice before grumbling something unintelligible. “Speak up, I asked you a question.”

“It went fine, the team did rather well outside of the usual failures, and we even got to tease Chrom a bit about his lackluster performance in the game.” There was a smugness to the girl’s voice that made Robyn want to punch her in her face, but she resisted. “I’m just checking what everyone got against the official statistics for the game, some people who played alongside me got some wildly different numbers from the actual ones.”

“I can’t say I understand a word of what you’re saying, but whatever makes you happy, I guess. Mind if I sit with you?” Not waiting for an answer, Robyn pushed a couple of the papers away and flopped down on the bench right next to the girl. “I changed my mind from last week, by the way. Shall we do the proper introduction thing?”

The girl was too busy trying to reorganize her papers to immediately reply, but after Robyn said her name and that she was there at the request of Chrom, she perked up, a sneer on her lips. “That’s cute, do you know how many girls he invites to practices? Not many, that’s for sure. Wish I could say I’d been invited by him, but my first time here was at the request of his sister, not of him.” That revelation was a bit of a blow to Robyn, as she’d begun to believe that this girl was a very rude younger sister that needed to be put in her place, and her reaction to that news was noticeable enough to be called out. “What, you can’t tell me you thought I was his sister, that would be hilarious. I’m his sister’s best friend, Maribelle. It’s a pleasure to properly meet you.”

The name struck Robyn’s memory harder than most things she encountered did, and it didn’t take much effort to remember where she’d heard it before. “You’re the high school bitch that Chrom left Sumia for, aren’t you?” she asked, not caring about her wording until she saw the offended expression that Maribelle was now wearing. “Oh gods, I didn’t mean it like that, I just—you know—damn it, that’s how _she_ referred to you, kinda, and that’s how I got you in my mind and I’m so sorry if I just made you hate me forever.”

“I was unaware that there was someone out there who couldn’t keep my name out of her mouth, but I’m sure it’s no one important. You’re forgiven, just don’t think of me as a bitch until you have your own reason to.” The offended look was gone as quickly as it had appeared, as Maribelle went back to what she’d been doing. “But yes, I would be the high schooler that Chrom dated for a few weeks, which was painfully awkward for us both because of the age gap and because of my relationship with his sister.”

“Relationship? As in…?”

“Friendship, don’t jump to any conclusions. Lissa’s a dear but I couldn’t become anything more than friends with her at the moment, she has so much growing up to do and I need to separate myself with the image of having dated her brother still.” Looking out onto the field, where the team was lining up between two of the bases, all pointed in one direction, Maribelle gave a wistful sigh. “And anyway, there’s someone else that I would love to get my chance with before I take on a safe option such as Lissa.”

Robyn wanted to pretend like she understood what was being said to her, but she didn’t have the slightest clue of what was being referred to with that. “O…kay, but is that why you enjoy ragging on the team? Because you’re getting back at Chrom for dating you?”

“I rag on the team because they’re a bunch of older friends of mine, there’s nothing spiteful about it in regards to that failed relationship. You’ll understand once you’ve gotten with and broken up with Chrom for yourself, trust me.” All Robyn wanted to do there was give a rebuttal about how she didn’t want to date him, but Maribelle was not going to hear a word of it. “That’s how he works, my dear, he suckers women into dating him and he turns out to be a horrible boyfriend, anyone who’s dated him can tell you that.”

“There’s only three of you who’ve done that, three’s not a large enough sample size to make that judgment with. I’ll find things out for myself—but don’t think that I’m trying to date him, please, I barely know the guy. You and what’s-her-face, you both knew him for a long time before getting with him, you had history before anything happened.” Robyn was getting visibly worked up with every word, something that had Maribelle giving her a knowing smile in return. “Don’t do that, I’m not trying to deny anything!”

Laughing, Maribelle winked at her. “You keep telling yourself that, but I think that your face gives your intentions away. Don’t worry, whatever happens between you and him, I’ll be here to give you a listening ear and a snarky comment about him when you need it.”

“Are you two almost done having your conversation up here?” The voice came from a couple rows up in the bleachers, a gentle voice that seemed rather young, male, and definitely not belonging to a college student. The two ladies looked to who was talking, and standing above them was a boy and a girl who couldn’t have been much older than fifteen or sixteen. “We didn’t want to interrupt you, but we’ve been waiting for a while and—”

“Ricken, dearest, you don’t have to wait until we’re done talking to join us.” Maribelle paused, looking at the girl that he was with before realizing why they’d waited. “Er, how much of what I said did you both hear?”

Turning to look at the same girl that Maribelle was looking at, Ricken seemed uncomfortable in answering, his body language enough for Robyn to gather what had happened strictly from it. “Is that Chrom’s sister?” she asked, hoping that her connecting the dots had worked properly this time. The three nods she received gave her vindication in her understanding, but then what had happened hit her and her jaw slowly dropped, having to turn around completely to see the wide-eyed and surprised look on the girl’s face for herself.

“Y-you’d date me if you weren’t crushing hard on someone else?” the timid voice that escaped Lissa’s lips asked, her focus entirely on Maribelle, who was going pale at the fact that she needed to answer the question. “You’re probably just saying that because you’re impressing your new friend here, but…I’d be okay with it if it happened, I really would be! We’d make a much better pair than you and Chrom ever did!”

Hopping down one of the sets of stands that was between the two groups, Ricken motioned for Lissa to follow him down, but she remained rooted where she was, to the point that Maribelle had to get up to join her. Meanwhile, Robyn continued staring at her with her jaw ajar, unsure of what she was watching but convinced that it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before, usually when we come to practices it’s just the three of us up here,” Ricken said as he came to standing above Robyn, smiling down at her with his fairly childlike face. “Are you one of the team’s friends?”

“I’m one of Chrom’s friends, yes,” she replied, snapping her mouth closed to not look as surprised about anything. “And I’m sure you’re one of Maribelle’s, which means you’re probably a high schooler like she is. Look at that, all the necessary introductions taken care of, and I haven’t even had to tell you my name.”

He seemed to not be super impressed with how brash her behavior was, but however he felt he didn’t make it overly obvious. “I think that having more people up here to watch the team practice makes them work harder, because they’ve got an audience. Someday, I’ll be just like them and winning league titles for this school, but before I can get there I’ve got to get through high school.”

“What a shame, I’m sure the team really wants a kid who’s still not gone through puberty playing for them.” The moment she’d said what was on her mind, and heard the dejected “oh” that Ricken gave in return, Robyn regretted opening her mouth at all. She didn’t know the kid and she was being a jerk towards him, just because she was used to being jerkish to people all the time. Twice in one afternoon she’d made that mistake, and these people were closer to Chrom than she would ever be, she was sure; this was undoubtedly going to have an impact on her relationship with him in the future, if any of these kids told him what she’d been saying to them. “Hey, maybe you’ll hit it before you get to the college game, then you’ll have a fighting chance at being important to the team, you know?”

“You’re right, I know you are, but me being small isn’t the end of the world. Like…you know there’s a player on the team no one can ever find, don’t you?” It was sad, hearing this kid trying to defend himself by throwing someone else under the bus, but Robyn felt bad enough about what she’d said to let him go through with it. “There really is, he’s on the roster and shows up on stat sheets but when they’re on the field you just don’t ever see him, even when he’s making plays!”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she replied, trying to not sound like she was onto his lies. “How can there be someone on the team that no one sees, but actually does stuff?”

Ricken shrugged as he took the seat right behind Robyn’s, pointing out at a spot on the lineup between first and second base that she hadn’t noticed was empty before as she followed his finger. “That’s right about where he should be, if they’re lining up by jersey number. Do you see him?”

“No, I see a gap between Grimsley and that transfer student from Ferox, is that what I’m supposed to be seeing?” She was sure it wasn’t, but she wasn’t delusional enough to fall for the idea of there being an invisible player.

He could tell that she wasn’t buying his words, as he dropped his arm from pointing. “You’ll understand soon enough that he’s real, just you wait. Everyone who hasn’t see the team in action before doesn’t think he exists, but he does and when you catch on you’ll find it just as fun to point him out to everyone as I do.”

“Yeah, I’m sure I’m not the only person who doesn’t see anyone where you’re telling me someone is, but go on with your life I guess.” There she was, being rude to this kid again, but she couldn’t help it, especially since she thought what he was saying to her was easily the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.

Rather than open himself up to more of her criticisms, Ricken instead turned his attention fully to the running drills the team was now doing, giving her absolutely nothing to call out about him. That ended up being fine, because as soon as she started growing bored of having no way to interact with the kid, Maribelle opened her mouth and gave her something else to do instead. “Robyn, that was your name, correct? Could you come here? You need to properly meet Lissa, while you’re both here.” She was beckoning for her to come up and join them in the upper bleacher, something that she did only after a moment’s hesitation.

“Maribelle says that you’re here because Chrom invited you,” Lissa said, her voice rather cheery and upbeat, even though she was visibly nervous talking to Robyn. “I don’t know who you are or why he trusts you enough to invite you to practice, but I hope you’ll come with us to the next game to cheer him on.”

“This is ‘meeting’ her?” Robyn asked, giving Maribelle a side-eyed look, to which she shrugged. “Anyway, when’s the next game and where? I might consider going, I don’t know yet though, there’s a lot of other important stuff for me to be taking care of this semester.”

Lissa straightened up how she was standing, adjusting one of the sleeves of her pristine white collared shirt (which was clearly part of a school uniform, given that Ricken was wearing something similarly designed, although Maribelle was dressed differently than them both) as she recalled the answer to the question. “I think the next game’s in Valm, but I don’t remember where exactly it is, and it’s next weekend, I know that for sure. Or maybe the next game’s the one at the big arena in Ferox, but if it is then you _have_ to go to it, no matter what. That game was the best one last season!”

“It’s an away game? How do you expect me to go to that? I’m a broke college kid, I don’t have the money to travel across the area to get to these games, especially not when I don’t care all that much about baseball!” She hadn’t meant to get so passionate in her declaration, but the power of her words was enough to take both Maribelle and Lissa aback, but they quickly recovered with a shared glance and excited looks. “Okay girls, what’s going on, I’ve just met you both and you’re looking at me like you’re about to—”

“Did you think that I was talking about you needing to come to the next game without a plan for how to get you there?” Lissa giggled, while Maribelle waved for her to continue speaking without taking too much time to pause between thoughts. “You’ll go there with us, duh! We don’t usually have too many people from here go to the away games, but since you’re Chrom’s friend I’m sure he won’t mind if you get to come along because of me and Maribelle wanting you to go.”

“—yep, you just invited me to come on your dollar.” Taking a moment to let that offer sink in, Robyn turned to look over her shoulder at the team as they were still running in lines across the field. On one hand, going to the game with these girls would mean getting to know them better, but on the other hand it meant time away from the place she was starting to call home. A realization hit her as she was watching the team, and she frantically turned back to look at Lissa. “You’re like twelve, should you be traveling across borders without an adult present?”

“First off all, I’m fifteen, and secondly Emmeryn comes with us because she likes supporting Chrom in what he does whenever she can.” Shaking her hands in a finger gun-like motion, Lissa waited to see what Robyn’s response to that was, but all she got was a blank stare. “So will you come with us? I promise it’ll be a good time if you do.”

A different set of possibilities had formed itself in Robyn’s mind, going beyond knowing the girls and being at the school. On one hand, if she went her passion for supporting Chrom would most likely be noticed by him and he’d respect her more, but on the other, if she didn’t go then he probably wouldn’t know that she’d even considered going in the first place. Not only that, but going meant getting to know both of his sisters better, and staying meant that doing that would have to wait for a later opportunity; why, though, was she thinking about needing to know them better? Why was that even something that she was using as a basis for making her “go or don’t go” judgment? “I’ll still have to decide later, sorry,” she said, being completely honest about the situation. “Let me get back to you about it next week, at one of these practices, okay?”

“Sounds fair to me,” Lissa replied with a small smile. “I won’t tell Chrom or Emmeryn about this plan until you’ve said yes, though, just so they don’t get any ideas. But if you do come, I’m sure you’ll like it more than you could ever like any game here at home. Part of the fun of the away games is the travel time itself, you know?”

“Don’t try to convince her when she still needs to decide based on other factors, I’m sure she’s aware of how fun going on trips is. After all, she’s not from around here, she knows what it’s like to visit somewhere she’s not from.” Maribelle’s statement hit Robyn deep down without meaning to, and not in a negative way. It was just odd that she could tell that she wasn’t from Ylisstol (or even Ylisse, but she didn’t know how much she’d gathered) without her having made any reference to it. “You’ve made it quite obvious that you aren’t Ylissean, Robyn, and your facial expression at hearing me say that only proves it. Where are you from, since it’s not here?”

“I…I can’t answer that, sorry.” There was a limit to how much Robyn was going to say to these relative strangers, and delving deep into her personal history was somewhere she’d already drawn a line. “It’s not bad, I’d just rather you not hear it and think negatively of me for it. I’m not interesting enough to come from somewhere horrible.”

The girls looked at each other once more, trying to come up with guesses to throw at her, but before they got the chance to, Robyn decided she wasn’t going to stick around any longer and she booked it out of the stands, nearly tripping on stairs on her way out but managing to escape without harm. “That was weird, it’s almost like she’s from somewhere exotic and too cool for Chrom and his friends, but she doesn’t seem like that kind of person. Maybe she’s ashamed of choosing here to go to school?” Maribelle suggested, while Lissa’s attention went out to the field, to one player in particular.

“She’s kind of acting like Robin does when you ask him about where he’s from,” she said, her eyes focusing in on the light-haired statistician on the team, who wasn’t running anymore but rather wheeling the whiteboard out for use. “Maybe this is something we need to let Chrom know about…”

“And betray Robyn’s trust by you going back on your word? You must be insane, we’ve only begun to know your brother’s new object of his affections and you already want to make her despise us!” Playfully smacking Lissa’s arm, Maribelle soon went to looking out at the same person she was. “But at the same time, I think you may be right about this. That was not the kind of behavior I expected from her, she’s been so quick with her words that watching her flee like that must mean something suspicious is happening.”

Out on the field, Robin happened to look in the direction of the bleachers and see that he had two girls standing in them watching him intently, which made him pick up his pace with rolling the board across the grass. “I don’t know what it is with those two, but whenever they stare at me like that, I worry that something awful has happened,” he muttered to himself, trying to shake the thought that he’d done something wrong out of his mind. “They know I’ll check to see who’s here, one of these days their vigilant watching will be caused by some disaster happening outside of practice, I’m sure of it.”

“Robin, what are you rambling on about to yourself?” Chrom asked, out of breath as he and the rest of the team walked around trying to calm themselves down after their running. “If you’ve got the breath to talk under, you could have had the breath to keep running with us. You didn’t even do half as many lines as the rest of us.”

“You know I stopped so I could get to addressing what all needed to be talked about after the weekend’s game, which shouldn’t be my task but a certain captain of ours always decides it should be.” That got Chrom to shut up, while the rest of the team started to gather around them to hear what needed to be said. “Okay, now that we’re all here and tired out so there won’t be too much back talk, who wants to guess where we need to improve for the next game? Any takers?”

He was met with a team full of stoic faces, all reddened from exertion. “Ri-i-ight, you’re not going to answer me for the same reason you’re not going to talk back to me. I’ll just give it to you, then—we need to improve on actually hitting the ball when we’ve got players on bases. That’s it, that’s what we need to do.”

A single hand was half-raised, before someone else pushed it back down. “He’s right, you know, we do need to get better about that. We could have invoked the mercy rule on our opponents if we’d gotten more solid hits,” Chrom added, looking directly at the person who’d been raising his hand. “That means not going up to bat and swinging wildly even if you know the ball isn’t being pitched right.”

“Maybe if you focused more on hitting the ball all the time, rather than just swinging every chance you get, you’d get more hits that aren’t just home runs.” Now Robin was focused on the same person, who was glancing between them both without the breath to retaliate against what they’d been saying. “Gods I love manipulating these kinds of conversations to not have to hear you try to defend your horrid play style, Vaike. It’s almost refreshing to know I’ll get through this without you saying a word.”

“Trust me, I can say lots ‘a words, they just ain’t how I wanna say ‘em,” Vaike said in return, inhaling deeply once he’d spoken. Even that little bout of back-talking was enough to get Robin to shake his head at him, pointing at the statement marked number one on the whiteboard: _Actually try to hit the ball 100% of the time, no exceptions._

Another hand was raised, this time by Lon’qu, who was looking disgusted at Vaike but wasn’t saying anything until he was addressed. Robin wasn’t sure where calling on him was going to go, but he had no reason to ignore him if he wanted to speak, especially since he was the newest member of the team. “Is this how every practice after a game will go? Run until players vomit then tell us what we did wrong?” he asked, face going completely neutral with his first word. “If so, I may end up transferring back to my previous school, we were harsh but this is ridiculous.”

“No, this is the only way the slackers on the team learn a thing or two, sorry that we made you participate in the running drills when you were actually the only person who had a positive hit-to-at-bat ratio in the game.” He finished his statement by pointing at the second statement he’d written on the board: _Hitting the ball means getting on bases, without needing to get hit by the ball_. “Some of us finished with equal hits and strikes, and others struck out every time they were at the plate. We’ll get better, eventually, it was just the first game after all.”

“If my performance in the next game matches the previous game, I will sit out of the punishment drills then. Is that fair?” While other players were giving groans of disappointment at the suggestion, Robin looked to Chrom and when he firmly nodded in acceptance, it was made a new team rule, scribbled in the corner on the whiteboard. “Very well, proceed without any more input from me.”

“I have something to say now,” Gaius chimed in, glaring at Lon’qu and not trying to be even remotely shy about it. “That’s fucking stupid, you can’t let him sit out without letting the rest of us get our chance to sit out. I pitched most of that game, didn’t let them score a point on us, and I had to run the drills and you don’t see me complaining.”

People were clearly back to having breath in their chests, because the murmurs of more discontent were getting kicked up in the group. “Seriously, I actually hit a home run and you didn’t see me whining because I had to run some damn lines,” one of the players said, while the person directly next to them added, “I didn’t run into the back fence three times catching fly balls just to have to run here, but I did it anyway.”

“Yes, yes, but if I don’t make punishments have some meaning to them, then they’re not going to be useful to any of us. I know that you hit our first home run of the season, Sully, you wouldn’t let any of us forget it that day, and I know that you made some incredible saves that you shouldn’t have needed to, Stahl, but what one of you does is counterbalanced by what the other one can’t. I can’t reward you both for doing something when you don’t do a whole lot of other things.” Moving to show the third and final point on the board in its entirety, Robin gestured to it with a sweeping arm motion: _Even if you hit the ball once, please remember that hitting it every time is what we need. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, but points matter above all._

“I think this is all pretty fair,” a voice in the middle of the group threw into the conversation, but no one seemed to notice that anything was ever said.

Chrom could sense that his team was about to start rebelling against the decision that had been made, but he couldn’t do anything to take it back. Stepping to be at the whiteboard’s side, he looked upon his team and shook his head, before clearing his throat to bring them all back to attention. “You guys need to stop with the infighting, I get that we’re having some creative differences here at the moment, but let’s focus on what’s most important here. We won the game, we had someone actually hit on base more than striking out, we had our first home run of the season, and we had some really great plays across the field. Yes, there’s room for improvement, but until we have the league title to our names, there will always be room for improvement.”

That got everyone to cease their arguing, even if there were a couple of threats to “take things outside of practice” that were spat as people worked through their anger. “Thank you for that reminder, Chrom,” Robin said, sounding genuinely thankful that he’d been given that kind of assistance. “There’s a reason they made you captain, because you know what needs to be said to get things done.”

“I also know that it’s getting hotter every time we’re out here for practice, and you know what that means?” He tugged at his shirt, lifting it up just high enough to expose his waistband before dropping it. “Next practice, be prepared to strip down and let the sun do its work on us, I think we deserve the time without being forced into being properly dressed out here after our performance this past weekend.”

The gesture Chrom made was noticeable even up in the stands by the three people watching the practice, and while Lissa seemed a bit disgusted at what it meant, Maribelle and Ricken were both looking forward to what it could mean, especially since they knew a certain someone who might come to the next practice wouldn’t be prepared for it at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiya this would've probably been finished sooner had I not been in the middle of hyperfocusing on writing something else, sorry. next month's chapter might be a bit delayed as well, but we'll haveta see on that

The first clue that the practice she’d walked into was different than usual was the fact that Robyn saw someone walking down towards the field without their shirt on. It wasn’t Chrom, so she wasn’t too interested or concerned with the sight, but at the same time she was curious about why the guy in front of her didn’t even seem to have a shirt with them. “Maybe it’s just a thing here at this college to go around topless sometimes,” she suggested to herself, trying to explain it without getting too invested in seeing the real reason. “I doubt he’ll be allowed to practice like that, though.”

Little did she know that, when she got into the stands, she would be treated to the sight of everyone on the team that was currently on the field wearing pants, shoes, and protective headgear if needed, but no shirts. Her reaction was to look around specifically for Chrom out on the field, wondering what he’d look like without his shirt on, and her wildly-turning head earned her a laugh from Maribelle, who was already sitting in her usual spot. “Welcome to what we always call the one practice session everyone should attend,” she said, motioning for Robyn to sit next to her. “The practice where the captain decides he’s going to let the team bruise up their bodies while we sit here and watch.”

“Where _is_ the captain?” Robyn asked in response, not realizing how desperate her voice sounded until Maribelle was already laughing at her about it. “Er, I mean, I don’t see Chrom and it wasn’t me keeping him occupied this time, so where is he?”

“You really only come here to watch him, don’t you?” Watching as Robyn’s face turned bright red, Maribelle curbed her laughter to explain what was going on properly. “He’s convincing those players who don’t want to be shirtless that it’s not an optional thing, it’s team-building or whatever term he’s using for it. The only one who’s allowed to have something on their top is Sully, and that’s because it’s morally illegal for her not to. But, you know, some people are just super self-conscious, but why do I care? There’s some good-looking guys out there right now and I’m getting to look at all of them.”

There were several things that came to Robyn’s mind to be said, but what she picked to run with was the most shocking and important part of it all. “You’re telling me that the fiery redhead that hangs out with all these guys all the time is a _woman_? I…I don’t think you’re telling the truth here, Maribelle. Wouldn’t it make more sense for—” she looked out at the team to point at the person she’d assumed was the team’s sole female player, but found that who she was looking for was shirtless and decidedly male in figure, “—excuse me, what? What’s going on here? I don’t understand!”

“If you’re referring to Libra, don’t worry, most people assume he’s a woman when they first meet him but they quickly learn he’s not, he’s just a man with hair and a heart of gold.” Sighing as if she was enamored with the person she was speaking about, Maribelle ran a hand through one of her ringlets, breaking the curls apart just for them to clump back together. “I’ve been jealous of his hair since I met him, he won’t share his secret for keeping it so lovely even when he’s playing baseball. Which, by the way, he only does because Chrom’s sister asked him to give playing with her brother a shot.”

“I wasn’t aware Lissa had that much pull over people,” Robyn remarked, before seeing Maribelle’s deadpan reaction to the statement. “Oh, you’re talking about Emmeryn aren’t you? That makes sense, I guess. But enough of that, what do you mean short-haired, loud-mouthed, ‘I’ll punch you if you look at me funny’ Sully is a girl? No one bothered telling me that about her!”

Maribelle shrugged, looking out at the team once more. “It’s not that big of a deal, she plays ball better than some of the guys on the team and is proud to let everyone know it. You weren’t here for the first game so you missed it, but she hit the first home run of the season, which has given her bragging rights over everyone, more or less. They got out-hit by a girl, they have to hear her tell them all about it.”

“Would she really do that?”

“Clearly you don’t know her very well, you’d know that she loves to rub people’s faces through the dirt whenever she gets the chance.” Letting the thought linger in the air for a moment, Maribelle turned to face Robyn with a smile on her face. “But, good news for you, she has exactly zero interest in anyone on the team so you don’t have to worry about her as you’re vying for Chrom’s affections.”

“Doesn’t have…okay, now you’ve got to be pulling my leg. I’ve seen her sitting on those guys’ laps before, you’re telling me she’s got nothing for either of them?” The nod Maribelle gave her in response made her eyes widen as she tried making sense of this news. “That’s crazy and I’m not entirely sure I believe you.”

“Ask her about that yourself, I just know from my sources that she’s not into anyone on the team.” Robyn raised a hand and reached towards Maribelle’s throat, almost as if she was going to choke her for being so difficult, and it made her jump back in fear for her life. “I’m not going to tell you everything about everyone on the team, you have to learn some things on your own! Do I look like some lowlife gossip who knows everything that goes on with the players of a team I’m spitefully invested in?”

Dropping her hand back into her lap, Robyn chuckled at Maribelle’s statement. “I don’t know, you do look like you know a lot more than you should about most things. So just get on with it and tell me who she’s interested in, or what’s up with her little boyfriends. Either one works, really.”

“I’m sorry but I can’t! What I know about them in specific is personal information that I—ouch!” She was interrupted by Robyn stomping her foot down on top of hers, grinding it into the metal ground of the bleachers. “Why are you physically assaulting me just for some simple gossip, when you can ask any of them and get this same information from them!”

“Because I know and trust you, and I don’t want to go ask any of them what’s going on.” While she felt a bit bad about resorting to violence, Robyn was beginning to get annoyed with Maribelle’s behavior and wanted her to know it. “But if you’re not going to tell me, that’s fine, I’ll find someone else who will. Chrom, perhaps?”  
Maribelle shook her head in denial of the suggestion. “Chrom knows nothing but his own manly urges, I’m afraid. He knows when he’s interested in someone, but knows nothing about who anyone else is interested in, including someone who’s interested in him.” She saw the light in Robyn’s eyes and quickly shut that down as well. “Someone _on the team_ who’s interested in him, meaning not you.”

“I doubt he’s even noticed that I’m curious about him, if he’s as oblivious as you’re painting him to be. Why would he pay attention to me if he can’t tell someone on his team likes him?” It hadn’t dawned on Robyn that she, being a woman who wasn’t associated with Chrom due to sports, would be attractive to him for many reasons, and it was taking all of Maribelle’s strength to not call out the flaws in her thinking. “But whatever, I’m not getting any information out of any of this so what’s the point, right?”

“I’d say there’s quite a large point that you’re missing, but the longer you stay oblivious to it, the better off you’ll be. Just from personal experience, of course.” Maribelle looked back out at the players in the field, giving a content sigh at what she was seeing. “Let’s forget about all of this though, shall we? There are plenty of very attractive men to be watching today and us talking is doing nothing but distracting from it.”

Even though she went along with the request and sat herself down with the goal of watching the practice for everyone, not just Chrom, Robyn ended up focused solely on him when he finally came out onto the field, a bat held over one shoulder and absolutely nothing covering his upper body from her gaze. She couldn’t help being drawn to watching him, especially when so many of the other players were moderately-attractive at best; he was tanned, muscular, and had something tattooed on his arm that she couldn’t quite make out from the distance she was watching at. Every time he did something, she was at the edge of her seat, hoping he’d come closer so that she could inspect him further, but he seemed to be intentionally keeping his distance from that part of the stands.

And he was, with good reason. “You really think she’s only up there to see me here like this?” he asked Robin, who was standing beside him trying his hardest to look comfortable being without his shirt. “I wouldn’t understand why, no one should have told her that we were practicing this way today.”

“She’s only ever here for you, she looks at you like a lovesick dog and it’s going to become a distraction for you if you go talk to her,” Robin replied, glancing towards the only occupied part of the stands, unable to see who was sitting there but having a strong guess that it was just Robyn and Maribelle, one of which was typically there and the other unwanted. “Just accept that she’s into you, figure out a way to get her to stop being into you, and then you can go over there to heckle Maribelle as much as you want again.”

“Please, don’t act like all I want to do is heckle Maribelle, even if she makes it easy to do it. I like knowing that we have fans dedicated enough to come watch us practice.” He was ignoring the part that she only attended practice to have fodder for teasing him, and to watch whoever she was interested in at the moment, but Chrom at least was being positive about someone being there. However, Robin wasn’t impressed with his reasoning, because he was still justifying Robyn being there, and if there was one person he’d never want to see walk into the stands again, it was her.

“Will you two please stop chatting like we have all the time in the world and get back to practice? I’m about to suggest overthrowing you and electing a new captain,” Gaius called out, throwing a curved pitch at the two that they had to dodge. “I’m thinking Frederick, he at least focuses on the game even if all he does is stand behind the plate and catch for us.”

Hearing his name be dragged into the mix, Frederick shook his head at the way his role on the team was being used as a negative. “I’m sorry, but are we acting as if catcher is not a noble position for a player on the team? They don’t receive the same recognition as everyone else, but are quite important in making sure the game moves smoothly. Would you rather give up your pitching glove for my catcher’s one?”

“Not in a million years, because unlike you, people actually call out my name in the stands when I do something cool. Frederick who? Doesn’t matter, Gaius is our guy.” Sticking his tongue out to show that he was teasing, he hadn’t been expecting the very guy he was making fun of standing up and walking towards the mound, tossing aside all of his equipment to keep him from being weighed down. The moment he got within range of being able to land a punch, that was when Gaius bolted into the outfield, only for Frederick to follow him, yelling out about how he needed to be respected, especially if he was someone that would be considered to be captain if Chrom was replaced.

Now without a pitcher or a catcher, the team stopped practicing entirely, standing around and starting to congregate near where Chrom and Robin had been talking at third base to begin with. “You know, I’m sure we could make the team a lot of money if we advertised these practices for all the girls to look at us,” Stahl remarked, looking at everyone that was gathered there and how they were all at least somewhat in shape, but when he got to looking at Sully she was glaring at him, giving him a big middle finger. “Hey, I didn’t think you would mind if girls were staring at you, you’re probably more muscular than everyone here and that’s kind of a thing girls like, right?”

“I don’t care what the hell you think, I’d mind being objectified by people like that, thank you very much.” Giving a second, different rude gesture that had the same meaning, she also gave everyone there a once-over, before shrugging. “But you might be right, I’m easily the most muscular person here by a damn mile, and that’s not even partially a lie. All of you are just really, really bad at getting yourselves to look fierce.”

“’Fierce’ is not something I have been trying to attain in my life,” Libra’s soft voice replied, standing a couple paces back from everyone and looking just as uncomfortable as Robin still was, even with no one actively paying attention to him. “Being part of this team wasn’t anything I had intended to make a long-term deal, and the rigorous training required to become more like the rest of you is not appealing to me.”

“Then leave the team, we don’t have the time to deal with people who don’t want to be here,” she snapped, before realizing who she was talking to and putting her hands in front of her face in shock at how she’d just spoken to him. “Damn it, I’m sorry about that, I know that you’re here for reasons that aren’t glory and winning games, I shouldn’t have gone to suggesting that you leave.”

Snapping his fingers to break up the argument before it could go further, which he could tell was likely given that Libra was actively trying to pull words together to reply, Chrom gave his input on the topic at hand. “Now, now, we’re not allowed to make people pay to come to practices, and if we could I doubt the school would let us do practice this way. They already let us get away without having an actual coach, I don’t think we could get away with much more than that.”

While that should have been a good stopping point for the conversation, it only opened the door for more people’s opinions on it. “C’mon, makin’ money off of practice just so we could show off our bodies sounds like a great idea! Can ya imagine the possibilities with it? Girls losin’ their minds over lookin’ at all of us and tryin’ to decide which one they like most? We’d all be swimmin’ in girls interested in us, and that’s livin’ the dream, ain’t it?” Vaike grinned, ignoring Chrom’s shaking head at what he’d said. “I’d be down for that, hell, I’d fight t’make it happen if I needed to.”

“You, offering to fight for something, what a surprise,” Lon’qu immediately replied, rolling his eyes. “The less women we have getting involved in this, the better for the rest of us. While I can respect the one woman we have on the team, we don’t need more following us and becoming part of our daily lives.”

Two very different reactions happened to his comment: on one hand, Sully was thanking him for actually showing her some respect despite his clear dislike of being around ladies, but on the other Vaike was not taking that without some kind of explanation, especially since he’d already gotten down for the idea that was never going to be explored. “Ya can’t just talk like that about women, what did any ‘a them ever do t’ya?”

“We are not getting into that, it is my personal history and that is as far as you will find out. I don’t need a vulgar, uneducated jerk knowing things about me just so he can accept me not liking his idea.” His reply was enough to cause them to almost come to blows, but once again Chrom had to step in to stop anything from happening, giving a warning that fighting was not tolerated and that they weren’t going to start charging money for practice, no matter how much they could make off of it.

That was enough to get the team to settle down, minus the two still running through the outfield chasing each other with stern words being thrown out. “I’m still not a fan of there being an audience for this exercise anyway, but what does my opinion on this matter?” Robin said, his eyes glued to Chrom as he talked, knowing that his thoughts were once again going to be ignored. “We’re becoming a spectacle of a team, we need to band together and actually make it to the championship game of both seasons, we don’t need the distractions that anyone watching practice from the stands provides.”

“We need the cheerleaders up there, that’s why we let them come.” Exactly as predicted, Chrom was once again defending the presence of the ladies in the stands, looking around at his team as they all stood mostly-shirtless, itching to get to practice. “This team needs all the supporters it can get right now, with how close we got to winning last year only for it to slip right between our fingers. Do you think this school wants to keep letting us bend all the rules to have this team, just to lose tournaments? I don’t think so, guys.”

“It’s not like they’re hurting anyone being _up there_ , I suppose,” Robin conceded, prying his eyes off of Chrom’s muscular upper body long enough to glance towards Maribelle and Robyn, only to find them both missing. “Er, perhaps this argument is no longer necessary, because they seem to have left. Let’s get back to practice then, while we have this moment of the stands being empty.”

That wasn’t the real reason why they were getting back to practice, but it was about time for the fun and games to end and the difficult part to begin. Without shirts on, everyone was much more mindful of where the ball was at all times, especially once the catcher and pitcher were both back in position and actual gameplay practice was possible. Gaius was capable of lobbing some painfully fast balls at whoever was on home plate, and sometimes he would intentionally chuck a slow one directly at them to watch them dodge. This was a habit that no one on the team really cared for him acting on, but the only person willing to call him out on it was Frederick, and as they’d already spent plenty of time playing cat-and-mouse that afternoon it wasn’t going to be happening again.

Every couple of minutes, Robin found himself looking back to where he knew Maribelle should have been sitting and watching, only for her to still be missing. He wasn’t going to let her whereabouts distract him, but he had a sinking feeling that she was doing something with Robyn and that could easily be plotting how to antagonize both himself and Chrom all the time, rather than just the usual teasing Chrom had to endure. If he was being honest with himself, his disdain for Robyn was greater than his worry for where Maribelle was, yet the combination of the two of them was one to be scared of.

This became clear as practice was wrapping up and the two ladies came running out onto the field, arms flailing to get the players’ attention. “We saw some creeps sneaking around the back of the stands earlier and were trying to get them to leave you guys alone, apologies if you thought we were missing,” Maribelle said, with Robyn nodding eagerly next to her. “The good news is that they left, but the bad news is that we missed seeing your shirtless practice, and I know that’s why I was here today.”

“What do you expect us to do about that?” Chrom asked, not noticing that, at the mention of unwanted people being around a couple of the players had begun to hightail it to where they’d stored their belongings to check if anything had been stolen. “My team’s done with practice, you’ll just have to wait until we do this again. Sorry, Maribelle, but I’m not making them practice longer to please you.”

“If not her, then me, maybe?” Robyn suggested, putting her fingertips to her cheeks to make a large smile appear on her face. “Come on, I’m new to this whole baseball thing and I wish I’d gotten to see whatever it was you were doing today.”

He seemed a bit hesitant to turn her down as well, something that Robin standing next to him caught onto immediately, but he did tell her no as well. That was when a couple of the players piped up behind them, saying that they’d stick around to do some extra practice if it was what the crowd wanted. “I mean, if you’re going to volunteer, I won’t tell you that you can’t. I’ve got homework to attend to, if I’m going to remain eligible to play I need to take care of that, but if you guys—and lady—want to amuse our audience, then by all means, go for it.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best course of action right now,” Robin mumbled, but he wasn’t heard by Chrom, because Chrom was too busy leaving the field to go grab his things and get to that supposed homework. Seeing how few members of the team were left, Robin shook his head and pointed directly at Robyn, her eyes widening when she saw his finger coming towards her. “You better not be planning to ruin anything around here, I promise you that if anything goes wrong while you’re out here I will make sure Chrom knows you did it.”

“Chill out, Grimsley, it’s not like I’m planning on doing anything except watch some shirtless fellas do what they do best,” she replied with a laugh, even though she was shrinking back at the accusatory finger still in her face. “You can go follow everyone else and be lame, or you can stick around here and hang out with the rest of us.”

He dropped the finger but did not seem happy as he said, “I have a class to attend in twenty minutes, I cannot afford to stick around here any longer than I already have. You behave yourself, Grimmel, you’re not fooling me with how you’re acting here.” She was left wondering how to respond as he turned and began chasing after Chrom, calling for him to wait up for him, and a major part of her wanted to follow them and prove that none of this was really over.

The chance to do that would have to come another day, she currently had Maribelle and three baseball players to deal with. One of those was easy to handle, because her and Maribelle shared similar goals in wanting to watch the team and maybe make things more difficult for a certain blue-haired captain if given the chance. But the others, they didn’t know anything about her beyond her name and even that was questionable at best, and they all shared a class together! “So, we’re practicing for these ladies, right?” one of the three players who were standing around still asked, looking at the other two with uncertainty in his eyes. “But none of us are exactly…good at pitching, so batting’s out. What are we going to do for them?”

“Oh no, you don’t actually have to do anything,” Maribelle said with a laugh, watching all three of them snap from their individual focuses to staring at her. “While it would be nice to see you in action, we aren’t actually expecting anything from you. Sorry if that bursts your bubble there at all, Stahl.”

“No, it really doesn’t. I didn’t think you’d want to see something from the most average player on the team, anyway.” While he might have been accepting of the fake-out of plans, the other two were not as easygoing about it and were already starting to kick up a fuss, to the point that at once he got punched in both shoulders and had two different demands to not be so passive about things. “Ouch, you two, I have feelings you know. Feelings, like pain and hunger. Can we go eat?”

“Normally I’d be down for dropping everything to eat, but I agreed to do some extra practice and I’m not leaving until I get to do it.” Popping her knuckles on the hand she’d punched him with, Sully shrugged off the defeated look that Stahl gave her. “Sorry, but if you want to leave that’s on you. Pretty sure I’ve got someone here who will help me the best he can, isn’t that right?”

She glanced towards the person who she was referring to, and how he was staring blankly back at her, as if he didn’t know what she’d just said. It took her loudly calling his name to get his genuine attention, and then a repetition of what she’d said to get him to actually understand what was going on. “Oh yeah, y’know if there’s anyone who’ll be around t’do that sort ‘a thing, it’ll be the Vaike, hands down. Wanna let me flex my muscles for these ladies and start this off with a little runnin’, or are ya scared I’ll stomp ya into the ground?”

“I was looking more for you attempting to pitch so I could show off my batting skills, but a race is fine by me. Try not to let your ego get too far ahead of you, I’d hate to hear you tripped over it while trying to catch me.” Their banter was playful, and after they’d lost their third person the race properly started, the two shouting insults back and forth even as they were running against each other, no actual end defined.

“Let me guess, that’s normal behavior for them?” Robyn asked, not paying any attention to the footrace that was happening as she watched Maribelle’s head-shaking reaction to it, which turned to a nod once the question was asked. “Interesting. They seem like they’re all good friends, the three of them. Is that also normal, or…?”

Maribelle went back to shaking her head as she replied, “It’s normal, but it’s clear that there’s something _else_ going on between them, don’t you think? I’ve been trying to decipher it myself, and Lissa and Ricken have assisted as much as they can, but all we know that none of them are strictly straight and—”

“None of them? Huh, interesting.” Tapping a finger to her chin in thought, Robyn hear Maribelle give a displeased grunt before she realized what she’d done, and so she sheepishly apologized for interrupting her. “That was rude, I guess I was just surprised to hear that.”

“—oh, trust me, if you bring it up with any of them they’ll deny it until their last breath. I believe that’s most of the reason why they stick so strongly together, to give the impression that they’re interested in each other, but I see right through it.” Pausing, Maribelle turned her head to see where the runners were (and found them in the outfield, screaming at each other without any movement between them), and she sighed. “Let’s just go, I know you wanted to come down here for Chrom and he abandoned you like a true gentleman wouldn’t. I’m not sure what you see in him, but he isn’t worth it.”

At that specific moment, Robyn’s mind wasn’t focused on Chrom or anything about him, but rather about the members of his team she’d just learned about. Something they were sensitive about having brought up to them? She loved knowing people’s weak points, and she’d just been gifted several of them without much effort. “I think going’s the best idea, sure,” she replied, closing her eyes quickly to refocus on where she was. “Maybe if we’re quick we’ll catch someone on the way out.”

“I highly doubt that,” Maribelle said, gently patting Robyn’s shoulder, “or at least, not the person you’re hoping for.”

“Right now, I’m hoping for someone else, so it could happen.” It didn’t, but Robyn knew who she needed to learn about next, and she knew how she’d learn about them, it was only going to have to take a bit of a peace offering.

* * *

Slowly, Robyn found herself getting invited into the fold of the baseball team, everyone coming around to accepting her as their newest fan (minus Robin, but she knew that his disdain for her would never ebb). She made it a point to attend as many practices and games as she could manage, skipping only the ones that contradicted her class schedule or other plans that she had made, and she figured that once they knew her to be reliable on showing up, they’d start inviting her to more team events that weren’t open to others. There were a couple parties that she got on the invite list to, and there was one study session for Ethics that she attended with the team, but for the most part her relationship with these people remained strictly as a fan.

The one exception to that was Chrom, who was definitely smitten with her, and she wouldn’t be lying if she said she felt something for him as well. He wanted to do all he could to impress her, to make her feel like she was included as part of the team despite not being a player or a manager, and it drove his right-hand man crazy with how much he talked about her. “I’m telling you, she’s bad news, and her getting so close with everyone is not going to end well,” Robin warned, for what felt like the millionth time as they were in the locker room before their last game of that half of the season, the last time they’d take the field before the tournament that determined if they were playing next semester or not. “I know you think she’s a good luck charm, but she’s _not_ , trust me.”

“We’ve been winning with more points than ever, and very little’s changed about the team itself since she started attending games, so I’m inclined to disagree with you there.” Smiling at his phone as he read a message from Robyn about how she was in the stands cheering for them that day, Chrom looked up not to see his exasperated friend but to see the awkward state of the rest of the locker room, players eyeing each other with a tension that he couldn’t quite place the source of. “Uh, Robin, have you noticed that some of our players are acting a bit weird today?” he asked, going back to reading the message instead of waiting for an answer. “I’m going to say it’s nerves but I wonder if it isn’t.”

“I haven’t heard of anything weird going on, no.” Robin’s reply came with a quick scan of the state of the room, seeing how certain players were avoiding each other’s eyes, how others were talking to people they tended to avoid, how it seemed like none of them particularly wanted to be in the same room as anyone else there. “But it looks like there might be something, perhaps there’s a smear campaign against the team and everyone’s let it get to them? But that would be strange, as I haven’t heard anything about it…”

“Do me a favor and find out what’s going on, I can’t have our team throw away our bid to the tournament right now.” Tossing his phone into his locker after sending a message to Robyn in response to hers, Chrom gave a wave towards Robin as he headed out to the field to see the fans in the stands and get a glimpse of the last team standing between them and tournament play. Robin shook his head, wanting to give a rebuttal but choosing not to because of how close it was to game time, knowing that if Chrom was upset as he took the field the results could be disastrous.

Even with some quick investigating, no one was saying anything about what had made the air in the room so sour. Ultimately it didn’t matter, because if no one was going to say anything then there wasn’t going to be anything done before game time, and once everyone was out on the field they seemed to bounce back to their normal selves, even if there was a tad bit of shoulder-to-shoulder behavior with a couple people that hadn’t ever behaved like that before. It was enough for Robin to notice during the game, and it was more than enough for their dedicated fans up in the stands to notice as well, specifically Robyn and Maribelle, who both seemed amused at how the team was now interacting with one another. They talked back and forth about how the dynamics seemed different, and how they were changing plays to get to interact more, as if those were positive things to notice.

In Maribelle’s mind, seeing Chrom’s team come together different might have actually been a positive, but for Robyn it was nothing short of a disappointment. She’d been working so hard to build a rapport with these people and get them to intermingle and know each other in ways that they hadn’t intended, and here they were working through the obstacles she’d created as if they were actually good things. Watching them win that game and get their bid to the two-game tournament to determine which team in the region got to go to the league season made her heart ache, but as she later learned they would have gotten a bid anyway based on how the other teams in the region ended their seasons.

Everything felt like it had been done for nothing over the next week, as the team was celebrated on campus for making it to the tournament once again. She shuffled between classes, trying to limit her interactions with people on the team as she decided what she was going to do about them. Her plan for ruining this season had been hastily built and executed and had come up short, and now she had not quite a week to come up with a last-ditch effort to end things on a bigger stage. She had friends in dark places to call on, people expecting her to do something about Chrom and his team that she’d been working for from the start, and now she needed to perform her best to make them perform their worst.

Yet no one was going to say that Robyn’s plan to ruin the regional tournament worked either, but with all things considered having it work out would have been bittersweet at best. Since getting there took some travel across islands, she had been invited to attend by Chrom himself, because he thought that she would be interested in seeing him and his team in their biggest game in the region. She had told him to his face that she wasn’t going to be able to make it, naturally lying because she’d been intending on showing up whether he invited her or not, and a last-minute invitation was easy to deny.

It was even easier when, because he felt bad for not inviting her until it was too late to make plans, he decided to take her out for a meal just to talk before he had to leave for the big game. They did talk, she was able to make him eat up her denial of the invitation even more, and she even managed to get her hands on his phone so that she could take a couple pictures of herself as a good luck reminder (among other things that he didn’t even notice). Then, after handing his phone back to him, she had one sly comment she felt necessary to make: “I’ve always heard that guys like you, popular with the ladies and all that, have a secret folder of nudes on their phone. Do you have one?”

“Do I have…one? I’ve never really thought about sending pictures like that before, it doesn’t feel like it’s ever appropriate, you know?” Chrom was surprised to hear what she’d said, but to see her crestfallen expression at the fact that he didn’t have anything to show her made him feel even worse about the situation he’d gotten himself into. “If you were my girlfriend I’d be able to show you, uh, that stuff without pictures, but since we’re not dating I, er, don’t know if I should…”

Hearing Chrom get so flustered brought butterflies to Robyn’s stomach, and she reached across the table to grab his hands to comfort him. “Don’t worry, if you send me them they’ll be seen and deleted. I just, well, want to know what a big, strong guy like you might look like underneath all those clothes.” She was laying it on thick, but she had a mighty need right then to get these pictures from Chrom, no matter what the cost. “What do you say, just this once?”

“I’ll consider it, but if I’m sending these then you should have to do something in return for me. I don’t know what, exactly, you should do, but I’m not sending naked pictures for free.” Every word was dripping with uncomfortableness, and Robyn was eating it up because she loved seeing Chrom in this position. “I do have to make it up to you for forgetting to tell you about the game tomorrow until today.”

“If you send me something, I’ll send you something in return,” she told him, giving him a seductive smile once she’d finished speaking. “It’s only fair that I do that.” Except that wasn’t what she intended on doing even slightly, because her plans for the next day already involved risqué photos and being at his little tournament game. That night, after they’d gone their separate ways without anything more than an apology and a reminder that they could be exchanging nudes for nudes, she went back to her place and looked at her half-packed suitcase, laughing when she saw a rolled-up posterboard sitting inside of it. “Oh Chrom, you’re so dense that you just don’t get when you’re being played,” she said to herself, before beginning to pack on top of everything already in the bag. “You’ll learn to regret your kindness soon enough, or else you’ll be regretting something bigger.”

Chrom was completely unaware of anything Robyn was planning, as he’d already gone into focus mode on the game the next day. He _did_ make good on that promise he’d felt he’d been roped into, sending a couple pictures without context, because she’d know the context for them, and fell asleep waiting for her reply that never came. When morning rolled around, he was a bit disheartened that he’d been played like that, but he couldn’t dwell too much because there was an hours-long bus ride to the stadium where their two-day tournament was being held. This was it, this was them getting ready for their regional win and their bid for league play in the next semester, and he couldn’t let himself get distracted by a girl when so much else was at stake.

The game started exactly as every game they’d ever played had, but almost immediately the team knew that something was amiss. There were hecklers in the stands, fans for one of the other teams in the tournament, which was strange given that the team they were there for was playing on the adjacent field at the same time—meaning that they had some reason to be there booing and chiding the Ylissean team, rather than rooting for their own. This was a team used to weird things happening to them, though, and so they shook off the jeers and played the best game they could manage in those circumstances.

Things were not made any better when, halfway through the game, an announcement rang through the stadium for security to take care of a pornographic distraction in the stands. It was one of those announcements that needed a double-take to be understood, and bewildered most of both teams on the field started looking around for what was being referred to—and when Chrom saw it, he first felt himself getting rather warm, before the feeling of shock at the image overcame him. It was a poster of Robyn wearing absolutely nothing, but he _knew_ she wasn’t anywhere near it, she’d said she wasn’t going to be there and he had zero reason to doubt her word. Someone must’ve been playing a dirty trick on her to try and fluster him, and it was working, badly.

Trying to focus after the situation was dealt with was difficult, but the announcement specifically stated that it was a male who was holding the sign who was taken out of the stadium, which was the final proof that Robyn herself had nothing to do with it in Chrom’s mind, and that meant that he didn’t need to worry about her being involved. She was back at the school, safe and sound, and possibly unaware that someone had leaked one of her private images like that, but she was a strong woman, she’d know how to handle it.

Somehow, they won that game, even if he was a bit out of sorts for the rest of it, and he made a mad dash towards the locker room the moment he could, dodging his teammates as well as the college newspaper staff trying to get interviews. As he was running across the field, standing right above the entryway to the locker room was Robyn herself, looking frantic until she managed to lock eyes with him, and he slid to a stop as he looked up at her, her reddened face a surprise to see. “I thought you…weren’t going to be here?” he asked, trying to stop his heart from racing. “If you were here, does that mean that you, uh, saw what I saw out there?”

“Ugh, yeah, someone stole that from my suitcase I guess, I brought that as a surprise for you after you won and I got to see you,” she replied, her voice seething with rage that seemed to cool with every word. “Guess your whole team got to see my nudes, oh well. If they were interested in them before this I’m sure they would’ve asked.”

“Y-yeah, I’m sure they would have.” He needed to clear his mind, he’d seen her naked and she’d seen him naked and one of those situations had been in front of a lot more people than it should have been. “I’m gonna, ahem, go now, before my team gets over here and sees me talking to you. Let’s chat later, okay?”

She dismissively waved him off, acting like her feelings were hurt at his behavior. As he ran into the locker room, she headed away from that entrance, a smug smile crossing her lips. “I can’t believe how _dense_ he is,” she muttered, thanking her lucky stars that he hadn’t pressed too many questions into anything, or even asked her about what she was supposed to have been sent the night before. She wouldn’t have admitted to him that she hadn’t gotten his pictures (but that someone definitely did, that much was true), or that she’d paid some guy rooting for a different team to hold up her “sign” for her, so that her hands weren’t dirtied with the criminal charges that came with it. She wouldn’t have even told him that she’d been planning to show up all along!

The heckling hadn’t been her doing but she wished it had been, and with how powerful it was she knew that once the championship game happened, as long as the team those fans were there for won, the Ylissean team was beyond screwed. It did raise the question of why those fans were at that game and not cheering for their own team, but she knew she’d get the answer for that soon enough. Right then, though, she needed to get back to her room and begin tying together the final strings of Chrom’s downfall.

While she went to do that, her name doppelganger was on a mission to get answers of his own. “Hey, are you ever going to tell me what that was you were doing last night?” Robin asked as he was coming into the guest locker room immediately after the game, before the rest of the team had managed to get off the field from their celebrations, slamming the only open locker closed because it was Chrom’s and he was standing right next to it. “That was a pretty big distraction you caused with your ‘lady friend’, I hope you know.”

“Sorry about that, I didn’t know pictures of her would come to an away game this far from the school and I thought extending the offer for her as a person to come was a friendly act. Next time I’ll make sure that she doesn’t have any tricks for me up her sleeve when she comes to a game, promise.” He’d come into the locker room right away to message Robyn to tell her that he’d enjoyed that photographic display during the game as well as her surprise appearance in the flesh, neither of which had been expected, but now that Robin was kicking up a fuss he figured it would be in bad taste to be telling the girl he so strongly hated how much he loved her little surprises, even if they were executed badly. But while he’d briefly been in their message thread, he couldn’t find the pictures he’d sent her, which was odd because he hadn’t deleted them completely from his phone yet.

To his surprise, there was a conversation up at the top of the list that he didn’t think he’d sent anything to in a few days, and it was while looking at that conversation that he noticed the little heart next to the name, which he didn’t remember Robin’s contact information ever having. The gears in his mind started to turn and he glanced to Robin, who was eyeing below the belt a bit suspiciously, and he felt his blood run cold. The distraction he was referring to might not have been the nude sign up in the stands after all. “O-oh shit, I didn’t mean to send _you_ those pictures, those were meant for my almost-girlfriend and I guess I screwed up, or maybe Lissa changed my contacts, or something just went weird and I sent them to you on accident.”

“Ha, why would you send me nude pictures on purpose?” Awkwardly laughing to try and move past what they’d just discussed, Robin couldn’t quite pull his eyes off of where Chrom’s pants clung tightly to his legs and groin area, knowing exactly what underneath the pants looked like (even if he wasn’t supposed to know). “I hope she wasn’t expecting them, you’d have disappointed her if she was. And maybe her acting out during the game was because she was deprived of some quality nudes, hm?”

“That might be it, now that I think about it.” Going back to looking at his phone, and fixing the issue with his contacts, Chrom was clearly none the wiser that the mistake that had been made was completely intentional on someone’s part, and that they’d never admit to doing such a dirty act. Yet when he went ahead and sent Robyn those same nude images that night, just because she’d been the one who’d asked about them—even if she’d meant for them to be sent to the wrong person all along—she couldn’t help but be hopelessly attracted to them, even if her overall intentions for the pictures were horrible.

The only thing that stopped her from forwarding them to everyone at the college was the lack of accessibility she had to everyone’s contact information, otherwise she’d have ruined Chrom’s life and career in sports right there. But she had bigger things on her mind at the moment, and it all came down to what happened the following day, starting that next morning. It was then that she paced around her hotel room, glancing at the clock on her phone every couple seconds just to see what time it was, in case by some miracle the entirety of the game had flown by. She knew that she'd be expected to be showing up at some point, with how everyone she knew there in Ylisstol was going to be cheering on the team, but she couldn't go. As much as she loved spending time watching Chrom and his team, she knew that she wouldn't be able to keep doing it earnestly with the team they were playing for the championship title.

The Plegian team was in the middle of a surprise renaissance year and, honestly, watching them beat the previous season’s champions would be nothing short of amazing. It wasn't that Robyn liked anyone on their team (not like how she liked Chrom, anyway), but that she wanted to see the underdogs win. She wanted to hear the pain in Chrom’s voice when he had to break the news to everyone that their season was over halfway through, that there wouldn't be any practices or games in the next semester because they'd lost to a team that hadn't won a single game the year before. Shivers went down her spine as she thought about how much pain he would be in doing that, about how much he'd need someone to support him in the aftermath…how much she could abuse his attraction to her in that time.

Her phone started ringing in the time she was looking away from it and she immediately answered it, expecting to hear the caller ask her where she was. “You've missed it,” the sultry voice on the other end said, sounding displeased with whatever was going on. “The team didn't even make it onto the field before the game was called, this happening after it was postponed yesterday.”

“Which team?” Robyn asked, preparing to throw her shoes on so that she could run down to the stadium to get a look at the upset Shepherds sooner than expected. “You can’t call a girl and tell her that without all the details, Tharja!”

“The Plegian team, who do you expect? Apparently there was some ‘inappropriate conduct’ behind the scenes with the team staff yesterday.” Even though they weren't in the same room, Robyn knew that Tharja was rolling her eyes at what news she’d just delivered. “It's stupid, they got told either get disqualified for all of next year or lose their placing this year and they chose to lose it. This is why I don't care about this team, the school’s the worst when it comes to decisions like this.”

“They gave up their chance at the title? Are you kidding me?” Wanting to throw her phone down onto the floor in anger, Robyn instead kicked the bottom of the bed, causing her foot to throb in the process. “They were supposed to beat the Ylisseans! I wanted to see Chrom cry in front of me!”

Tharja dryly laughed, before saying, “Come up with a different way to do it then. I'm behind you the whole way, you know I only want what you want.”

“And what I want is what _he_ wants, you know this.” Robyn was bouncing on one foot as she tried looking at the damage she’d caused to the other one in her angry kick, but all she could see was that it was red and tender from the contact. “The team failed to give us what we needed, so you know what this means, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, looks like you’re going to have to be working at this longer than we’d planned. All for your father, but what a waste of time if it doesn’t work.” Tharja was laughing again, her hand covering the receiver of her phone to muffle the sound slightly. “You’re committed to making this happen against all odds, even if the Plegian people can’t keep their act together to help you.”

“The only thing in my way now might be the schedule itself, but I promise you I will make this work out. Father will get what he wants out of me, I am not going to disappoint him over this.” Robyn hung up the phone, throwing herself onto the bed as she let Tharja’s words sink deep into her heart. She’d already done so much work to sabotage this Ylissean team, now she’d have to do even more, but to see Chrom suffer at the end of the day…there was no sacrifice of her time she wouldn’t make to see that happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Robin has been warning all along that this woman is trouble, why has no one listened to him??


End file.
